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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 6238927" data-attributes="member: 58416">In something of a contrast to the tone of my last post, I do think a new edition needed to happen.  3rd Edition is the edition of D&D I started with.  I still play it, and I still enjoy it, but there are some flaws in it which I do not believe can be fixed without a new edition.  Pathfinder does a pretty good job of fixing a few issues, but some of the most glaring problems still exist.  When it comes to 4th Edition, I have something of a love/hate relationship with it.  Today, as I type this, I'm someone who has reached a point where I can say I enjoy 4E and have learned how to use it properly.  In the past, there were times when I had a very negative impression of 4E; in fact, I credit 4E with prompting me to try non-D&D games again.  Still, there are many things about 4E I enjoy and feel it does well.  Some of those things include the mentality behind encounter design; I like the idea of a lot of moving pieces during a combat, and I especially like the idea (though not necessarily the execution) behind traps in 4E.  One of the other things I vastly prefer about 4E is the lessened power curve between levels; as a DM, it was nice to know I didn't need to rewrite huge swatches of my game because the players had gained one or two levels.  All things considered, I actually liked a lot of the new cosmology too; in particular, I liked the Feywild and Shadowfell concepts of being echoes of the world, and I vastly preferred the 4E version of angels.  The ease of running a game for a DM* is also undeniable -for the most part.  I think Dragonborn are cool; I'm a fan of playable lizardfolk... er... dragonfolk I guess in the vase of Dragonborn, but they fit a trope that I highly enjoy.  I like 4E Devas better than 3E Aasimar.  Things I didn't like about 4E: In my opinion, there was a clash between the style of the game the mechanics support, ad the style of the game which was portrayed via fluff in the preview books and the early books.  At times, the game seems to more heavily being something like Descent* than being a rpg.  At times, the game can (by default) have a more narrow* focus than I'd like.  In spite of generally liking the cosmology far better than the Great Wheel, there are a few elements scattered across 4E lore which I strongly dislike; I certainly missed some (but not all) of the 3E gods.  I hate 4E Tieflings.  In many cases, the game rules don't make a whole lot of sense, and, while I understand that some sacrifices need to be made for the sake of playability, one of the things I had to learn about 4E to help my enjoyment of it was "just don't think about it and accept that's how the rules say it is."* The same footnote can cover everything I want to say about the three things I marked.  I am aware it is possible to go outside of that narrow focus.  I can play 4E in a variety of styles.  However, I personally feel that it is very heavily tied to a particular style.  While I can do things like build a castle and have interests which focus on things outside of combat encounters, the game doesn't do a very good job of rewarding me for wanting to do those things.  Again, it's not that I cannot play differently; the game just isn't set up in a way which tends to reward me in a way I find satisfying for doing so.  That leads into my positive comment about ease of DMing because, while I do feel the entry barrier into being a DM is very low for 4E, I believe it can be somewhat more difficult to learn not the rules of the game, but the intent behind how those rules should work.  Ze game did not remain ze same; there is a different mindset behind how I run 4E compared to other games, and it took me a long time to learn that; not realizing that is a big reason I felt negative toward the game before.  So, while learning to use the rules of 4E is very easy, I'm not so sure that learning to use them well is easy.</blockquote>

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