Spatula said:
You seem to be talking more about good design than anything specific to any edition. There have been well-designed monsters, and poorly-designed ones, in every edition of the game. 4e may encourage creature designers to think more about appropriate abilities for their creations, but it does not make poor monsters impossible to create.
I agree that it doesn't make poor monsters impossible to create (in fact, I suspect that thematically poor monster design may be one common flaw of homebrewed 4e, in the same way the mechanically unbalanced classes or feats are a common flaw of homebrewed 3E).
But it does not follow that the converse is true ie that 4e makes good design that precludes shallowness no more likely than 3E. Nothing in 3E linked the mechanical design goals of an adventure to the thematic content of that adventure. Hence, one can get Bruce Cordell (a pretty big name) writing Bastion of Broken Souls for WoTC (a pretty big company): a mechanically unimpeachable adventure which is as shallow as can be.
I feel that 4e aims at something different in this respect, and through the many examples of power design that we already have in the PHB and MM facilitates that different approach. And that different approach will preclude the sort of shallowness we see in Bastion of Broken Souls (eg because the crystals on the positive material plane will have some sort of power that thematically expresses their link to the font of life: maybe something happens when they become bloodied that is expressive of this connection).
Jeff Wilder said:
Just so I understand:
If an NPC were to tell your PC, in game, that "kobolds are shifty li'l bastards," your PC would take that to mean that kobolds can Shift as a minor action (or whatever)?
4E shows that kobolds are "shifty" by allowing them to Shift, and this is evidence of "thematic content" that "precludes shallowness"?
The PC wouldn't make the metaphorical connection, no. The player is the one who is playing the game and deriving aesthetic pleasure from the metaphor.
And yes, I do think that those metaphors are there. In the case of kobolds it's made painfully obvious by the pun that the designers have used to name their signature ability. But you can see it in other powers as well.
It's really no different from The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk is a metaphor for the Id, Thunderbolt Ross for the Ego, and Banner for the Super-Ego. Not all comics, nor all fantasy RPGs, can have their thematic content so easily unpacked, but mostly it's not all that subtle (these writers aren't going to win any Nobel prizes for literature).
It's not part of my agenda to argue that anyone other than me should be deriving this sort of pleasure from playing RPGs. I'm only arguing that 4e is better designed to deliver it than 3E, and that this is a reason against labelling 4e shallow.
