What on earth does "video-gamey" mean?

[Hawken]

You raise some good questions.

The point I was attempting to make with the comment you quoted was that everyone in 4e is basically so much the same that they all feel bland. They are all basically the same product, just different packaging.

It digresses from the point of this topic, somewhat, but also still furthers my point of video-gamey-ness in that everyone is basically the same thing in a video game and the same thing in 4e.

In 3 previous editions of D&D, if you were a fighter, you knew it and so did everyone else and when it came to physical combat, you were going to come out on top unless you were "outgunned". If you were a wizard, sure, you could wear pants instead of a dress, but you were aces at spells.

Now, there is no real distinction between a fighter's power and a wizard's, and there is no limit to them.

In 3e, a fighter going on a full attack would out-damage just about anything out there, while a wizard would drop the bomb on enemies like no one else. Now, everyone has roughly the same effectiveness which is lower than any other edition because 4e requires the presence and cooperation of 3-4 other players to succeed.

However, with other editions, especially in the earlier days, there were never any arguments of one class being "better". Wizards were the tops in terms of raw power, but that was "balanced" by keeping others around for assistance like a good cleric or rogue and a few fighter types. And the non-wizards were happy with this because they knew that the more they kept the wizard safe, the less he had to use his spells, the more he would have to use when things got tight. That was balance in 1e and 2e.

Balance never really came about until 3e when WotC tried to make classes "the same" in terms of power and skill and failed miserably. I would have to say that for 4e, they super-succeeded, or over-achieved their goal! Now, everyone is "the same" to the point of blandness and it is now up to the players to have to come up with the "window dressing" to make their characters distinct instead of it already being there.

It is the generic-ness of the game now that, I suspect, strongly contributes to the video-gamey-ness of D&D. "Player 1" is little different than "Player 2" or "Player 3" or "Player 4" except in name and general appearance. Now, they have watered-down powers that require other watered-down powers to get through an encounter whether it be combat or skill checks.

In 1e-3e, players could run around solo and if they chose to play in a group they could do more than they could individually. Now, characters have to run around in a group just to have a chance at survival.

Also, the idea of what amounts to unlimited healing only contributes to the "me, now" immediate gratification of modern (gaming) society. "Back in the day", there was no problem with having to stop and make camp. Sometimes it got excessive, but at times, having to find a defensible spot in a dungeon made for a more exciting game, and even if our rest was interrupted, we still got hp and spells and such back when we were done. Now, the reasoning, "we can have more encounters before resting", just feeds the "me now" fire and seems to have suspended fun and imagination for a lot of people.

 

[Fifth Element]

This is kind of a "point and shoot" or "press a button" thing that definitely feels video-gamey along with things like Cleave which auto hit their target regardless of the target's AC. Just about anything that affected anything else in previous editions had to make either an attack roll or allowed a saving throw and that should be the way it is for 4e.

This is essentially the same in 4E. "Just about anything" in 4E that affects anything else requires an attack roll.

You bring up a single example in 4E. Which previous editions match with magic missile.

 

[Fifth Element]

In 3 previous editions of D&D, if you were a fighter, you knew it and so did everyone else and when it came to physical combat, you were going to come out on top unless you were "outgunned". If you were a wizard, sure, you could wear pants instead of a dress, but you were aces at spells.

I fail to see the difference. In 4E a fighter still excels in melee combat, while the wizard throws spells.

You seem to be arguing that since all attacks use the same basic mechanic to resolve, they are all the same.

Aren't we supposed to be staying away from edition wars anyway? I suggest "4E is videogamey!" can evolve into nothing but an edition war.

 

[Lackhand]

Me no speek english so good on mondays. So bear with me

In 3 previous editions of D&D, if you were a fighter, you knew it and so did everyone else and when it came to physical combat, you were going to come out on top unless you were "outgunned". If you were a wizard, sure, you could wear pants instead of a dress, but you were aces at spells.

Just because you don't like marking doesn't mean it doesn't do its job.
Wizards get rituals for free, several teleportation powers, and the ability to set enormous tracts of land on fire with only the power of their mind. This ignores the hiding rogues, the healing clerics...

In 3e, a fighter going on a full attack would out-damage just about anything out there, while a wizard would drop the bomb on enemies like no one else.

I think I know what you mean, but these points are contradictory: which did more damage, the fighter or the wizard? Has this changed, and if so, is that necessarily wrong in the ways its changed?

Now, everyone has roughly the same effectiveness which is lower than any other edition because 4e requires the presence and cooperation of 3-4 other players to succeed.

Oh No, The Team Game Requires A Team To Play! But yeah, I take your point here. I think this was true in previous editions, in that you needed a cleric or you were dead, a fighter or the Iron Golem would eat you, &c &c -- but this wasn't as true in 3e, for example. So I definitely take your point.

However, with other editions, especially in the earlier days, there were never any arguments of one class being "better". Wizards were the tops in terms of raw power, but that was "balanced" by keeping others around for assistance like a good cleric or rogue and a few fighter types. And the non-wizards were happy with this because they knew that the more they kept the wizard safe, the less he had to use his spells, the more he would have to use when things got tight. That was balance in 1e and 2e.

This contradicts your previous point I take this one too, though -- there's definitely a continuum.

In 1e-3e, players could run around solo and if they chose to play in a group they could do more than they could individually. Now, characters have to run around in a group just to have a chance at survival.

I suspect this won't have changed much. RPGers are a resilient and home-brewery race of folk.

Also, the idea of what amounts to unlimited healing only contributes to the "me, now" immediate gratification of modern (gaming) society. "Back in the day", there was no problem with having to stop and make camp. Sometimes it got excessive, but at times, having to find a defensible spot in a dungeon made for a more exciting game, and even if our rest was interrupted, we still got hp and spells and such back when we were done. Now, the reasoning, "we can have more encounters before resting", just feeds the "me now" fire and seems to have suspended fun and imagination for a lot of people.

Hmm. I'm not sure I see what you mean here, which I blame entirely on a sleepy monday afternoon and too little coffee.
The healing isn't unlimited in 4e; in some ways (only daily resources granting healing without risk) it's much more limited, depending on how flush with gp your characters are.

Resting, too, has been more of an issue, though perhaps only in microcosm: in my last game, we holed up just to find a 5 minute rest spot, but wouldn't have tried to spend the night there; a pleasant gradiation.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

It wasn't until Attacks of Opportunity reared its ugly head as an "optional" rule in 2e--and later became an official rule in 3e that D&D started becoming video-gamey.

The only video (computer) game I've played with AoO was Temple of Elemental Evil, and that was an attempt to remain as faithful to the 3.5e rules as possible.

 

[Hawken]

You raise some good questions.

This was in response to Mustrum. Everyone else after that posted while I was posting.

There are very few things in videogames that activate an automatic effect with no chance of failure. In many respects I would consider this to be a serious departure from videogames, rather than a movement towards them.

I think your definition of videogames is different from mine. To me, videogames are the big stand-up quarter-hogs, while presumably to you, videogames are what you play on PS3, X-Box or whatever. (To me, those games are just "games" or "Xbox games" or "Playstation games", they're not really "videogames" to me). And in my context, I stand by my comments on the video-gamey-ness of 4e.

Oddly enough, the idea of each character having a large number of "at-will" powers is an incredibly rare idea in videogames, or at least any videogame that can easily be compared to D&D. If such an ability exists in a particular game, it tends to be the exception, rather than the rule. In fact, most videogames tend to under-utilize such ideas, and ever since I got that information about 4E I have been hoping that 4E will influence more game-designers to use that concept.

Not true at all. Fighting games, just to cite an example. Being able to throw a Fireball like Ken or Ryu from Street Fighter is a "special ability" that they can do at will, while something like Ryu's Super Fireball is more of an "encounter" power that they can typically do maybe one or two times in a match. Same with Scorpion's teleport or spear attack or Liu Kang's flying kick. They are at will "powers" that they get in addition to their basic attacks. Ryu doesn't run out of Dragon Punches much in the same way a 4e Fighter doesn't run out of Reaping Strikes.

I think this harkens back to my point about hiding complexity in videogames. Forcing a Will Save to activate a Mark is something that slows down a tabletop game with more rolling and confirmation, but making that kind of check takes the computer less than a nanosecond.

Game computations by a computer have nothing to do with how 4e is like a video game.

I didn't say anything about forcing a will save to activate a mark. Just like you don't force a reflex save to activate a fireball. Activate a fireball, target gets his reflex. Same with how it should be for a mark; activate your mark, make it against the target's Will save for it to affect the target. And don't say it takes more time. That's a load of bull! You can roll 2 d20s at the same time you can roll one of them! Designate which one is for the Mark and match that attack roll against the targets Will defense. Problem solved, time game is slowed down = 0 seconds.

This argument is based on two things: that "needing friends to win" is a videogame concept, and that 4E D&D makes solo play impossible. I find both claims rather sketchy (you need friends to win a game of baseball, and most videogames are single-player...), but since I haven't had the chance to run a solo game of D&D myself (I intend to, though), I can't really comment.

Yet you just did. That argument is not based on that premise either. Don't put words in my mouth. Needing friends to win is one of the concepts of 4e. It is designed, and even explicitly written, that it is build around a team of 4-5 people working together. That means that the classes, races, skills, monsters, encounters, treasures, all of that, are built around having a group of 4-5 people.

So, as designed, if 3-4 other people working with you are required to succeed in any given encounter, then, yes, solo play is impossible with the rules as written. Can a solo game be made, sure, but that will require heavy adjustments on the part of the DM, since even with monsters being scalable, they are scalable in power to a party of 4-5 people, not a single person.

Also, we're not talking about baseball here and then switching to one man video games, that's just a red herring.

That is a terrible simplistic way to look at it... I mean, aside from the implication that every character in a fighting game is just a different look on the exact same set of abilities (an implication that many fans of that genre would get really angry about), your implication is based on the idea that all videogames enforce this kind of symmetry, just like 4E does. Some do, sure, but not most of them.

No, its not simplistic, its rather profound and more importantly, accurate. And I didn't imply what you wrote in that quote, those are your assumptions.

However, since you brought it up, lets use two popular fighting game icons; Scorpion and Sub Zero. Both are ninjas, both are cool. Both have an energy power (fire or ice). Both have a stunning power (harpoon to the chest/face or freezing ice blast). Both have "escapes" (teleport away from incoming attacks to Donkey Punch the enemy or create ice clone to intercept attack while flipping away). And a few other theme-related powers each. One doesn't really have an edge or a difference over the other except in how their powers are executed. You play based on whether you want to freeze someone or chuck a spear into someone's chest and drag their reeling carcass over for an uppercut from hell.

Any two characters in 4e are pretty much like that. They will both have X number of at will and encounter powers and other than that, basically the same saving throws, bab, same number of feats and same basic attacks. The only difference is in how its packaged.

Also, am I the only one who is bothered whenever anyone brings up the "if everyone is special, then no one is" quote? It is a quote from a deranged villain character that is meant to be an insight into how his envy and hatred for "supers" has lead to his desire to remove them from existence. I don't think it even supposed to work as a greater statement of truth, and it has never rung true for me.

The things is, whether you realize it or not, it is true. In the context of that cartoon, if everyone had super powers (whether they came from technology, mutation or some other "gift"), who would really be "super"?

Now apply the same to 4e. If everyone gets at will and encounter powers, no one is really special anymore and now everything is a power in 4e. You can call what a wizard does a spell, but since it no longer requires "casting", meaning no chance of disruption, and there are no components involved anymore (except in rituals), then its more of a super power. Same thing with Fighters. If every Fighter can Cleave or Reaping Strike, he no more or less special than the next Fighter doing the same thing, since they'll all have about the same AC, same hp, armor and weapons. There's very little room for variation and then you've still got them effectively forced into the same role regardless of who else is in their group.

I can understand that you don't like the fact that the game has change drastically over the years, but nothing you mentioned here has any necessary connection to videogames. "Balance" has nothing to do with videogames (and I can quote the videogame developers who lament the way fans demand everything be balanced), and I don't think it has much to do with roleplaying either.

I never said anything to that effect. Again, don't put words into my mouth and assume that your opinions about what I say are my own. And my statements either make my claim or they support/defend/explain my claims. And for every quote you can get to support your point, just as many can be found to negate it.

And if you don't think it has much to do with roleplaying, fine. That's your opinion. But your opinion doesn't disprove my assertions.

Well, a great many videogame RPGs don't even keep track of grid movement, so that doesn't work well as an argument.

Actually, they do. Maybe not where the player controls the number of spaces, or which spaces exactly, but the computer executing the game does.

And the point of that statement was that when the game started becoming more tangible, less imaginative, more rules-intensive, that's when it became more video-gamey. AoOs were just the catalyst, but when you start having to worry about precisely where your character moves (unless it was something the DM absolutely needed to know for like a trap or something) and track that, then it became more like a video game.

I am sorry that you don't like recent trends in D&D. However, just not liking the change is hardly proof that it is a "videogamey" change.

Again, you're assuming I feel that way. Don't. Everyone knows what happens when you assume....

You bring up a single example in 4E. Which previous editions match with magic missile.

True, I brought up a single example to make a point. If you want to start counting examples. There are more examples to support my point in 4e than there are in other editions.

I fail to see the difference. In 4E a fighter still excels in melee combat, while the wizard throws spells.

With BAB being the same for everyone of a given level, fighters are no longer the dominators in melee combat. A high strength rogue or ranger with a few good feats can out perform a fighter now in raw hits, whereas before even with feats or whatever, a fighter had a bab that others wouldn't get. And wizard spells of a given level are commensurate with the damage anyone else can do, while the things that set them apart (fly, invisibility, teleport, etc.) are now essentially parlor tricks that last for 1 round or they have been removed from the game entirely (necromatic, summoning, polymorph).

You seem to be arguing that since all attacks use the same basic mechanic to resolve, they are all the same.

Not the same exactly, but they're not too far different either. A ranger and warlock making ranged attacks are going to be doing similar damage with some variation on other effects tied into that attack. An arrow or bolt of energy is used but the effect is basically the same; taking x damage.

Aren't we supposed to be staying away from edition wars anyway? I suggest "4E is videogamey!" can evolve into nothing but an edition war.

This isn't an edition war. And it hasn't evolved into one either. And with this thread going to at least 12 pages, that means the mods here agree with that.

Just because you don't like marking doesn't mean it doesn't do its job.

Again, never said anything about like or dislike. Please don't insert assumptions. I have nothing against the concept of it, if there was an exception or escape from it (such as a check against the target's Will). A 1st level Fighter marking a 4th level Fighter just doesn't hold water. The 1st level guy is not skilled enough or even a credible threat to the 4th level guy to occupy his time or penalize him if he doesn't "pay attention" to him. At least the Will save gives a chance to avoid or shut down the mark especially in situations where it shouldn't logically apply.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

1) Everything is about combat now. Now don't try the "I still roleplay!!!!" dodge, that's not the point. Look at the wizard for a good example of this. Wizards were durn fun to play if you wanted them to be. You got all sorts of neat spells in with combat spells. Now, wizards are blasters. By contrast, bards are gone (Yeah, to return, if you wanna pay more for them), because they aren't as strong a combat class. Like it or not, the mechanics seem to be way more combat focused now.

Just recalling several years of browsing threads on EnWorld, the biggest complaint about the game was that the Combat system did not work out very well in practice. It did work well between levels 3 to level 8 or so, but even then certain things did not work out. Low levels had characters that were way too fragile, and the high levels had too much book keeping and too many interlocking and stacking variables to account for in most cases. In general, a low level fight had you too fragile, and even a well run high level fight was a race to inflict the first Save of Screwed effect.

Also, once you got beyond the sweet spot, the spell casting classes were indeed very fun to play. They could do plenty of interesting things. In fact, it was possible to put together a spell list that could handle any situation you cared to consider. So good in fact that the rest of the people at the table could take a 3 hour break and go play world of warcraft while you handled the combat, and the diplomacy, and the exploration with a combination of blasting, charm, and divination abilities.

The vast majority of people who played D&D as their primary pen and paper RPG ran alot of combat, and the combat was not as entertaining as it should have been. No one who ran D&D most of the time had any complaints about being able to role play. At worst, they complained about optimized power gamers ruining their roleplay experience.

4th Edition still lets you have a swiss army knife wizard. Its just that instead of a swiss army knife so bulky you could beat homeless people to death with it, you have a more reasonably sized tool. Take a very hard look at the Rituals section of the PHB before you claim Wizards are now blasting only.

2) I think the powers system draws a lot of these complaints. "More Abilities = More Fun" seems to be the growing trend in MMOs... Fighters in early MMOs were like fighters in past versions of DnD. They hit stuff with sharp things. Now fighters in current MMOS don't hit things with sharp stuff, they perform "Dance of the Seven Blades" or "Lunging Doomsday Thrust". The focus on the "class role" seems to be kind of the same thing.

This is a fair criticism or comparison. While you still have the option of a unadorned basic attack, most of the abilities you have carry some sort of description and have some aspect which makes them more than just a basic attack. However, I am not convinced that this is such a bad thing in the end. As long as efforts are made to keep the flavor descriptions of the powers closer to D&D instead of videogames like WoW or Diablo, this is not in and of its self a bad thing.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Cthulhudrew]

I think (as someone born in the last year considered Generation X) that Leiber, Vance, and Moorcock are going to be remembered a lot like The Clash , The Pixies, or Sonic Youth.

It just blows my mind that Moorcock is repeatedly associated so closely with Leiber and Vance in this thread. While I'm not knocking the company (because all three are quite visionary, and have repeatedly been acknowledged by so many people with associations in Sci-Fi and Fantasy as lasting inspirations), there is one big ginormous difference between them, in my mind.

That is this:

Moorcock is still writing and being published today. He is still alive, and just as prolific as he ever was, and if anything- due to the wonders of the internet- he is more connected to his fanbase than ever.

So all this treating him like some old dinosaur that's been taken out and shot is really mind-boggling to me.

But the bottom line is Michael Moorcock is Thurston Moore and JRR Tolkien is John Lennon. Even if you like Sonic Youth more, and even though Sonic Youth heavily influenced every rock band in the 90's... Sonic Youth will never be the Beatles.

Moorcock is far more Beatles than Tolkien is. Tolkien's like- Bob Dylan. Or, if you insist on a Beatles ref for Tolkien, then Moorcock is the Sex Pistols.

I don't think you realize quite how much of the swords and sorcery and sci-fi genres were influenced by Moorcock, clearly. Hell, the whole "anti-hero" concept (as opposed to the more traditional heroic journeys of Tolkien) is arguably creditable more to Moorcock than anyone (yes, I said arguably).

 

[Cthulhudrew]

It's no use talking to TwinBahamut. He's making statements about things that he has no knowledge of and admits to it. I originally thought what he knew about some authors history and influence was lacking but it turns out he's even lost to what's even going on today and where it came from.

Zogmo and TwinBahamut are right in that we're getting off topic with this discussion. No more on it from me.

 

[WizarDru]

However, with other editions, especially in the earlier days, there were never any arguments of one class being "better". Wizards were the tops in terms of raw power, but that was "balanced" by keeping others around for assistance like a good cleric or rogue and a few fighter types. And the non-wizards were happy with this because they knew that the more they kept the wizard safe, the less he had to use his spells, the more he would have to use when things got tight. That was balance in 1e and 2e.

0_o Apparently I was playing a very different AD&D than you were, then. It was common knowledge amongst everyone I knew that the only balance in AD&D was that fighters leveled faster than magic-users and were much stronger at early levels, until wizards got powerful enough to outclass them later. That, and the differing XP tables, were the balance that AD&D provided. And many people found it very unsatisfactory.

And a quick review of the Dragon magazine archive shows that there were CONSTANT arguments about the merits of each class and their relative power levels. That doesn't even raise the question of bards and psionicists (and later barbarians and cavaliers).