What is the essence of D&D

[Garthanos]

Difference is I'm not denying that you can have fun with 4E, or that you shouldn't enjoy it. If you like 4E its great, didn't do it for me.

Gathanos and Tony Vargas posts always have an undercurrent of your an idiot or not playing the game properly if you are playing any other edition other than 4E and its 4E that is the odd one out.

Your undercurrent is 4e isn't D&D, not sure where you get the idiot reference. But you argue quite strongly against misassertions or even just assert oh but that is a rare thing it's just YOUR experience --> ie it shouldn't be considered important others have different ones .... just saying.

 

[billd91]

Am I denying people have fun playing fantasy Vietnam...

Perhaps not, in a literal sense, but it sure is a loaded reference...

 

[Zardnaar]

Your undercurrent is 4e isn't D&D, not sure where you get the idiot reference. But you argue quite strongly against misassertions or even just assert oh but that is a rare thing it isnt real it shouldn't be considered important.... just saying.

D&D wasn't D&D for me, if you liked what it offered great, I'm not going to argue against why you like it nor do you need to justify it.

You and TOny Vargas to deflect and deny and use very silly examples to try and deflect.
I don't like 4E point blank its mostly the class design and things like healing surges and its magic item rules.

That is my opinion.

I'm not denyiong any experiences you had with say AD&D but going by what is published its not fantasy Vietnam by any means. Can be played that way sure, the occasional adventure is, and death is a bigger threat in most than modern D&D absolutely. But the default is not fantasy Vietnam, I like that its grittier than modern D&D but fantasy Vietnam to me is implying something like DCC, Tomb of Horrors or extreme DM and players who do like that sort of thing.

Old Adventures often assumed bigger groups as well, 6-10 or even 20 (OD&D) so if you have a smaller group and don't realize it yeah sure some of those adventures would be brutal. I just read a 1E intro 6-10 people.

Crap antagonistic DMs are not a system problem, it may have been a problem in the 80's IDK I wasnt there and its really a YMMV.

 

[Campbell]

I am personally a fan of addressing each version of the game as if it were its own game. I get the argument that the changes to the setting and the fact that Fourth Edition does a poor job at the foundation activity of the game (dungeon crawling) makes it not feel like the other versions.

@Garthanos

You have made it clear that dungeon crawling is not a personal priority of yours. Can you understand how to others it might be the very essence of what makes it Dungeons and Dragons?

The skirmish war game stuff I personally find beyond the pale because the game was so much more than that. It's also weird to me because the game was designed by war gamers for war gamers.

 

[Garthanos]

Perhaps not, but it sure is a loaded reference...

The game was a painted over war game originally ... its as accurate as his calling 4e nothing but a skirmishing game that didnt do anything else well. But calling out the other a game which does only fantasy vietnam well... is WRONG

 

[Zardnaar]

The game was a painted over war game originally ... its as accurate as his calling 4e nothing but a skirmishing game that didnt do anything else well. But calling out the other a game which does only fantasy vietnam well... is WRONG

BECMI is better for fantasy Vietnam, 1E does dungeon crawling well.

You're mixing up your editions or projecting faults from 1 edition of D&D onto another. Its funny when you backwards project 3E stuff onto OSR stuff as well like magic being uber.

BECMI the hit dice were smaller, death at 0 hp, and Clerics couldn't cast spells.

Alot of the adventures reward the social and exploration pillars if you make the effort to find the NPCs to help you out in the adventure.

If you're a jackass to all the NPCs or gung hoe wade into it yeah you might struggle at level 1.

 

[Campbell]

So being a war game with asymmetric information and Fantasy Vietnam have different associations to me. To me Fantasy Vietnam implies that game is stacked against you in an unfair way and a referee who is not acting in a neutral manner.

 

[Garthanos]

D&D wasn't D&D for me, if you liked what it offered great, I'm not going to argue against why you like it nor do you need to justify it.

You and TOny Vargas to deflect and deny and use very silly examples to try and deflect.
I don't like 4E point blank its mostly the class design and things like healing surges and its magic item rules.

That is my opinion.

This was arguably the first balanced class design in the history of D&D so when we try to narrow down why people didnt like class design the answers are often hard to figure out the pattern Tony is focusing on.

I'm not denyiong any experiences you had with say AD&D but going by what is published its not fantasy Vietnam by any means.

The adversarial DMS found support in Gygax's writing and people had problems denying them as no "I am not being a jerk I am challenging the player.... " look at that horrible Monty Haul DM" lets all laugh at the guy who lets people get away with stuff ... you are supposed to be making sure they EARNED those stripes. Those low hit point low levels ensured the best option for success was basically cowardice and not being heroic at all.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Well, you'd be drifting topic again, as the issue isn't liking or disliking, but merely correlating something unique to 4e with the perception of that edition as NOT-D&D.

But, given that, you should expect one of 3 possible responses:
1) R did not exist in 4e (possibly because R doesn't exist at all).
2) R was also present in another, undisputedly-Really D&D, edition (or PF1, for that matter)
3) Oh, I hadn't thought of that, that's another possibility (though maybe a remote or trivial one) to consider along side the Primacy of Magic.

For your first two responses, I refer you back to the the rest of the paragraph that you cut off in your quotation:

I can only imagine you'd come back with "Reason R is nonsense because of X, Y, and Z", right? But then what? What would you have actually "refuted"? Are you claiming that the players who cite reason R are lying or mistaken about their own motives? Because what they say doesn't make sense to you? Really?

While I'm not completely immune to the satisfaction in being right about how you'd respond, I'm actually more interested in your answers to the questions starting with "But then what?"

As for your third... your heard-it-all, give-me-an-objection-so-I-can-refute it attitude so far has not exactly given me strong reason to expect this response in good faith. I can't help but notice that even speaking in the hypothetical, you are preemptively trivializing the alternative explanation that you had not thought of.

Now, since I tend to be OK with arguing both sides of an issue...

My consistent criticism throughout this conversation has been that you're not doing a stellar job at entertaining perspectives other than your own. I'm just going to say that your attempt here has not altered that assessment, and move on.

 

[Garthanos]

ts funny when you backwards project 3E stuff onto OSR stuff as well like magic being uber.

Magic at high levels made the fighter a side kick in 1e too maybe not as bad as 3e but I saw DMS giving 1e mages an entire levels worth of spells in 1 book as a treasure.