What would it take for 4E to win over the old guard? (Forked Thread: Changeover Poll)

[Greg K]

It is incredibly difficult for me to articulate though I can sum up my feelings about 4e like this. It isn't about the player anymore, its about the character and its stats. A player's abilities and knowledge don't matter, only the numbers on the character sheet. I think 3e started this and 4e continued it with their skill challenges.

For me, it is about roleplaying the character and the numbers on your sheets represent how capable the character is in various areas (e.g, physical capabiliities, combat, knowledge, skillls, etc.).
The player utilizing their master's or doctorate in chemistry (or whatever)when there character does not have the skill at that level (let alone at all) or utilizing their player knowledge of monsters is not, imo, roleplaying, ymmv.

 

[Evilusion]

Well we gave 4e a try for 6 months. The last game session we all kinda say well enough of that.

It is not that 4e is a bad game, it is just rather bland.

Evilusion

 

[Jasperak]

For me, it is about roleplaying the character and the numbers on your sheets represent how capable the character is in various areas (e.g, physical capabiliities, combat, knowledge, skillls, etc.).
The player utilizing their master's or doctorate in chemistry (or whatever)when there character does not have the skill at that level (let alone at all) or utilizing their player knowledge of monsters is not, imo, roleplaying, ymmv.

True that but when a player is listening to an NPC talk and knows what he is saying is bunk, but fails a Sense Motive check...

The whole negotiation skill challenge example in DMG (pg 76-77) takes all roleplaying out because regardless of what you say it all comes down to your roll. In one session of 4e one of the players was involved in some PC/NPC interaction and it all came down to opposed checks for various skills. Lame. There is no mechanical difference between roleplaying the challenge and rolling dice (except some circumstantial bonuses or penalties.)

There was a time where it was players thinking on their feet, reacting to what the DM was saying, now it is look at your character sheet and pray that you took the right skills. There is no mechanical reward for roleplaying anymore.

 

[Retreater]

I was divided between the last two poll responses, but I think that 4E can be salvaged to suit my tastes. However, by the time that much effort goes into it, I might as well play another game.

2009 marks my 20th year gaming, so I am an "old guard" by some definitions.

Based on my admited limited experiences, no gamer I personally know has gone 4th edition. That's about 20 people in four different gaming groups, spread across 3 different states.

Here are the reasons most of us would offer ...

1) We like 3.5 just fine, and any improvements 4E makes is not worth throwing out our vast 3.5 collections.
2) Bitterness about the 4E GSL and shutting out 3rd party support (several of us have written for and been published by 3pp in the d20 era)
3) 4E doesn't seem "complete" to us; it's missing classes and races that we enjoyed from the 3.5 core rules without giving us anything we really wanted.
4) rituals feel tagged on; they are too time-consuming and expensive to ever have a real use in the game
5) utility powers are too limited and too few
6) without a lot of rituals and utility powers, most of the 4E rules plays just like a tactical skirmish game - like D&D miniatures
7) creative problem solving and roleplaying seem to take a backseat to a robust combat system in 4E; which is okay except that other entertainment media (videogames) handle this better than RPGs

Retreat

 

[RangerWickett]

I can live with the 4e rules. I'm not thrilled with them, since I'd prefer some sort of 'power' design that doesn't require you to have printed out cards that encourage players to shuffle through their powers looking for which to use, rather than coming up with interesting actions on their own.

But that's secondary. I really just don't like the aesthetic. The art, writing tone, implicit setting, and book layout turn me off from the game.

I don't feel glad to have 4e books on my bookshelf. They're just not pretty, and that's the first of many psychological stumbling blocks that makes me ask, "Why should I bother playing this game?"

Compare this to the New World of Darkness core book. I think it starts with 15 pages of narrative and mood-setting before it even gets to the table of contents. nWoD is a game focused on telling stories. D&D 4e is a game focused on killing stuff. Sure, you can tell stories with it, but the books don't encourage that.

 

[Gothmog]

I'd probably be considered "old guard", having gamed for 25 years, and started with AD&D 1e.

And for the record, I LOVE 4e. I'm an admitted 4on, and proud of it! IMO, it is close to what the game needed to evolve into to stay viable and fresh. I don't think WotC ignored the old guard- it listened to what players from the previous edition wanted and their criticisms, and tried their best to fix many problems. Its not perfect, but its a huge breath of fresh air over the old and stale D&D tropes of the last 30 years, but it keeps enough to make it recognizable as D&D.

At the end of D&D 3.x, the fanbase was already badly fractured, and the system was in dire need of overhaul. As has previously been established, 3e broke new ground and introduced a lot of cool innovations, but the math of the system broke down, casters were horrendously overpowered while non-casters were baggage, and the system relied too heavily on magic items. In addition, the prep time for running a 3.x game could be horrendous if you went by the books, and IMO I felt like I was always fighting the system to run the game. Apparently a LOT of other folks had these same complaints, because the main design goals of 4e addressed these problems, and did so in a mostly successful fashion IMO.

I fall strongly in the simuationist camp of gaming- I want the game to be able to handle a logical and coherent world. To a large extent, this is governed by how the DM presents the world to his players, but system can play a pretty big part too. 4e has some problems in this regard, namely in healing surges, and the at-will/encounter/daily power divide. But even with these problems, I've found 4e a MUCH better game for my gaming style than 3e. Hell, we've even got house rules for longer-term healing, permanent injury, and a modified way of using powers that makes us happy. My group and I gave 3e the old college try, and after 4 years of frustration (and thousands of dollars spent on 3e books) of not being able to have the kind of game we wanted, we gave up 3e. We've also done something with 4e we'd NEVER been able to do with 3e- get non-gamers (and female ones at that!) into the game, and they have responded very positively towards it! Now that is exciting! We're having the best time we've ever had playing D&D with 4e.

So my list of likes and dislikes for 4e are:

Likes:
* Standardization of improvement for BAB, skills, and a SOLID mathematical model for the game
* Class roles, and the flexibility of powers in customizing a character that truly plays and feels different than others of the same class
* New multiclassing rules
* Reduction in power of casters, and increasing power of non-casters (although in practice, the 4e wizard is still extremely powerful when played well)
* Trained/non-trained skills rather than dinking with skill points
* Combats are fluid and dynamic by design, and tend to be more chaotic and exciting. Happily, the days of toe-to-toe full attacking with no movement are dead and gone.
* The same assumptions are not used for PCs and monsters, any why should they be? Monsters have screen time of a few rounds most of the time, so why bother with niggling enormous stat blocks? Monsters also play very differently than in previous verisons of D&D, and differently than each other, which is a great change.
* Moved away from Great Wheel, stale cosmology. The Shadowfell, Feywild, Astral Sea, and Elemental Chaos are far more evocative to me.
* Rituals are awesome- the best thing to happen to spellcasting in a long time.
* A powerful build now won't break the game, and builds are no longer the focus of the game. 4e is more about playing the game and using teamwork. HUGE improvment, and I've seen guys obsessed with builds in 3e turn over a new leaf and actually roleplay and work with the rest of the group!

Dislikes:
* We need more rituals!
* I'd really like to see racial choices make more difference to characters, whether in the forms of feats or powers only available to members of a certain race.
* 4e tends to be a little too tactical at times- I love me some minis combat, but 4e pulls me out of the game sometimes with talk of "squares", and precise minis movement.
* 4e needs more options for non-combat abilities and powers. Maybe giving PCs a non-combat utility power at the same levels they gain other utility powers?
* Good rules for healing and long-term injury. I understand what they were trying to do with healing surges, but it ends up feeling too "gamey".
* Some different way to manage powers other than at-will/encounter/daily. Again, a great idea, but probably not implemented in the best way.
* Although not a big problem for me, I can see why people would miss druids, bards, barbarians, half-orcs, gnomes, etc. This will be solved soon (or already has been, if you use Ari's Advanced Player's Guide), so its not as big of a deal.
* We need a viable OGL. During 3e, many of the best and most innovative products came from 3PPs. As of right now, that is one thing I miss with 4e, and I hope gets remedied soon.

 

[Ydars]

4Es problem is not just mechanical for me (some of the mechanics are great); it is philosophical. No longer is D&D what any of us imagine it to be! Now it is what WoTC say it is! It is a minatures based tactical wargame with a few ill designed subsystems (these needed another year of playtesting tweaking mimimum) for non-combat. Indeed, the DMG even tells me what is FUN now despite the fact that some of the things that are NOT fun (travelling, limited food and water, encumberance etc) have produced some of the most compelling gaming I have ever had! I know some people hate these things. Fine; ignore these rules if you like, but let me have them. I will not tell you what D&D is if you allow me my vision in return.

Instead, they have designed a ruleset that "takes us back to the heart of D&D" as if THEY are the final arbiters of the game. The problem is that D&D has been "owned" by this community, from the moment Gygax penned the first book and many of us NEVER agreed with how he meant the game to be; the concept is just bigger than any one person or group or company. The OGL was a legal embodiment of this principle that WoTC have foolishly tried to bury along with the idea that we have any ownership of D&D. I suspect they will soon learn who "owns" D&D, to their cost.

There is a certain "corporate facism" at the heart of 4E that I find repellent. I hope they learn from what ensues in the next few years. In answer to the OP; for 4E to win me over, WoTC will have to STOP telling me what is fun and limiting my options as player and DM. I will certainly use 4E for a subset of my games but I will NEVER convert over completely. 3.5E is just a much better ruleset for certain kinds of game and THAT is the heart of WoTCs failure.

 

[roguerouge]

i.e. "D&D is a game about slaying horrible monsters, not a game about traipsing off through fairy rings and interacting with the little people." - James Wyatt, "Races and Classes" (pg. 34) ?

If that's representative of the game mechanics--and I haven't cracked a core book due to economics, GSL, and distrust of WotC's adventure design--then I'll never be playing 4e. It's not uncommon for one of my groups that spanned 2e and 3e to go 7 hours without combat. And in the 1 PC campaign that I DM, we've done up to 15 hours without combat. The fact that a poster or two has said that they do active noncombat sessions is hopeful; the fact that others say that the skill systems is the red-headed step-child is worrisome.

 

[JohnRTroy]

For me, it has do two things--keep core conceits (they're more concerned with fixing things that weren't broken IMO), and be entertaining to READ, not just play.

I can't believe how sparse the books are nowadays. MM didn't stimulate my imagination like the older ones did. PHB's many wonderful spells and magic items were reduced to some simplistic stat blocks. I can't see the kids being as inspired to think about creating their own monsters and rituals as the "old guard" did way back when.

 

[roguerouge]

At this point, for many, I think this is rather like saying "What would it take for TV series X to win over more viewers?"

The fact of the matter is that by its current structure it has particular characteristics - it has its own "flavor", if you will. Not everybody likes it. For them, the answer becomes, "Not be what it is."

That's false when it comes to me. 4E doesn't have to change at all for them to win me back as a customer. Hasbro and WotC has to change.

My objections could be resolved without changing a core rule. First, they needed to not monkey round with delaying the GSL just to make things difficult for third party producers like Paizo and Green Ronin. Second, they need to reestablish my confidence that they know how to write a module. All of the adventures that I liked were written by a third party or (in the case of Red Hand of Doom) by people who are not going to write for them again. These two factors are inter-related. Combine that with universal dismay at the digital initiative, and they undermined my consumer confidence that they could provide a worthwhile product.

Since I have more modules and characters and NPCs and settings than I can reasonably use in a decade, I don't need them to have fun playing DnD any more. They have to make me want to support them. Instead, I mostly feel ill will... towards them, not 4e.