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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Corinth" data-source="post: 4031377" data-attributes="member: 497">The problem is that D&D 4.0 attempts to compete with World of Warcraft not by attacking the latter game's weak points, but by attacking its strengths.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Abilities that are available at-will, or have a one-encounter/one-day cooldown, mirror the way that World of Warcraft has most class abilities either on short cooldowns (which, if translated from real-time to tabletop play, are effectively at-will) or on long cooldowns (which, likewise, translate to per-encounter or per-day) and are focused upon practical use in a tactical combat or adventuring situation.  (Abilities that are, for all intents and purposes, intended for use during downtime are minimized.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The skill list, likewise, is reduced to those that have an immediate application in the adventuring context while those used more or less during downtime are removed and instead rolled into general attribute checks.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The classes are designed to fill necessary roles in an adventuring party and have no need for justification outside of this concern, regardless of whatever label gets tied to them.  Defenders are tanks, Strikers are either ranged or melee damage-per-second specialists, Controllers are crowd control specialists, and Leaders are healers; this is a better-communicated version of the Tank-Healer-DPS Trinity of World of Warcraft in that crowd control isn't necessarily recognized as a separate specialty, but instead is acknowledged as part of the DPS role.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The adventure design paradigm is one of a series of encounters, often linear in their design, that build up towards a master villain--the boss--and each encounter has one hostile NPC per PC in the group as a baseline.  Elite NPCs count as two normal NPCs (much akin in concept, but different in execution, to how Elites work in World of Warcraft).  These encounters are physical in nature, commonly done as combat, and the exceptions are quick-and-dirty interactions either with plot-device NPCs that aren't to be killed (for whatever reason) or with untouchable NPCs that may or may not persist across adventures.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For all intents and purposes, a game setting consists only of Adventure Sites (the World of Warcraft equivalent, usually, is a dungeon instance), friendly towns (to do downtime maintenance and upkeep) and the occassional random encounter.  (This feels more like Guild Wars or Dungeon Runners than World of Warcraft, but still an MMO influence.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NPCs have set XP awards.  Loot has level requirements, both to craft and to use.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCs, by default, have no meaningful influence upon their surroundings.  They are passive participants in their society and its concerns, as their actions have no impact outside of what's scripted for them.</li> </ul>All of this points to 4.0 being a great basis for translation to a console, PC or MMORPG, but it makes for a horrible tabletop RPG because electronic RPGs of all sorts are superior media for all such games.  Those media are better capable of executing games of this sort due to technological benefits that makes it possible to handle all of the details involved in playing this sort of game a very easy thing to do- and thus take all of that load off of both the players and the GM.What tabletop RPGs do better than electronic RPGs, or board games for that matter, is not merely simulation of a fictional world.  (Computers do that better also.)  Neither is it addressing themes through narrative conventions.  (Books, comics, film, radio and television are all far superior media for such purposes.)  What tabletop RPGs do that no other popular media allows is the immersion of an individual into a secondary world for the sole purpose of living out a secondary, parallel, life in a position and perspective other than our own--and in a historical specificity and continuity other than our own--and thereby allow us to experience--to live through--things that otherwise are impossible to know, be it the experience of living through the tragedy of Troy or the experience of living as a merchant mariner on a free trader far into the future, or something else entirely, for the expressed purpose of developing the minds of the participants through such play. This is what D&D's design--what all tabletop RPG design--should focus upon, facilitate and encourage.(Note: The only other medium that can accomplish this is Classical Theater, as Friedrich Schiller notes in his "Theater as a Moral Institution".)</blockquote>

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