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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6093023" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my post upthread, I explained what, from my point of view, D&Dnext is missing: a mechanical structure that underpins solid pacing both within and across encounters, and does so without intrapartay imbalance both for groups that play the 5-minute day and for groups where the GM regulates the availability of extended rests. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] elaborated on my point, and I agree with what he said: the power structure that underpins balance and pacing considerations also underpins monster design, adjudication of ad hoc actions, damage, etc, and in general makes the game very easy to run in the sort of player-driven, seat-of-the-pants style I enjoy.No amount of class design or race design is going to change the fact that D&Dnext does not have this. Its classes are deliberately built on an assymetric model, balanced around a hypothetical "adventuring day" that the mechanics do not enforce. Furthermore, the reason why D&Dnext has assymetric classes and a lack of mechanical enforcement of the adventuring day is obvious: it's because the designers have become allergic to overtly metagame mecahnics in the wake of the significant hostility to such mechanics in 4e.For the Advanced modules to generate a play experience anywhere in the neighbourhood of 4e, they would have to tackle the above issues - for instance, via very sophisticated techniques for enforcing the adventuring day at the metagame level. (I'm thinking of something comparable to the role of the Doom Pool in Marvel Heroic RP.) The problem is, at every point the game seems to lack the structures on which to hang such a mechanic - for instance, its monster and NPC design seems to have returned to pre-4e norms (and ad hocery) rather than the systematic specification and sclaing that characterise 4e.Not only is there no obvious capacity to build on that sort of a Advanced module, Mearls has said not a word about any such thing. The talk of advanced modules is all about domain rulership, wound systems and facing in combat. These have absolutely nothing to do with my 4e experience.And what I'm saying is that there is basically no evidence that this claim is in fact true. Or even feasible.The "split" exists. There is a (large) group of D&D players who won't tolerate overt metagame mechanics in their game, and who (as far as I can tell) rely on more or less overt GM force, plus very strongly enforced social contract, to play the role in their games that metagame mechanics might otherwise play (such as handling fighter/wizard balance issues, enforcing the "adventuring day", etc). D&Dnext will be their game.But just as those players have excellent reasons for not enjoying 4e, some 4e players will have excellent rasons for not enjoying D&Dnext.The "split" that you are describing is, for me, like the "split" between those who enjoy Wagnerian opera (like me) and those who don't (like my partner). My way of dealing with that split is to not play very much Wagner while my partner is in the room. But when I'm enjoying my Wagner, it doesn't intefere with my enjoyment that there are others out there who don't like it.Moving from simile to the case itself, the "split" in the D&D fanbase is obviously a commercial and marketing problem for WotC. But I don't feel myself under any special moral obligation to help them solve that problem. And I especially don't feel myself under any obligation to play a game I don't enjoy in order to keep them afloat commmercially.And as [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] pointed out, I even moreso feel no such obligation, given that those who have actually caused WotC's commercial problem, namely, those who have stopped playing the game WotC produces and have stopped buying its products, have had a tendency to spend the last 4 years telling me that (i) I hate D&D, and (ii) I'm not really a roleplayer, and (iii) that my game is crap.I know you think that this time it is different - that 4e was in some way divisive, whereas D&Dnext will be unifying. But that's not how it looks to me. 4e wasn't divisive - it's just that it offered a game experience that some wanted and others didn't. So those others didn't buy it or play it. And D&Dnext likewise will offer a game experience that some want and others don't. And those others won't buy it or play it. And I anticipate being one of them.As for "sharings of experience", I'm one of the more prolific 4e posters on these boards. If WotC wants to know what (at least some) 4e players enjoy about 4e, they just have to look at threads like <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333786-Pemertonian-Scene-Framing-A-Good-Approach-to-D-amp-D-4e" target="_blank">"Pemertonian scene framing"</a> or <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?326200-Why-I-like-skill-challenges-as-a-noncombat-resolution-mechanic" target="_blank">"Why I like skill challenges"</a>.As I've already indicated, I personally don't think that it is possible to have a game that gives A the general "feel and experience" of 4e while giving someone else a funamentally non-4e experience. For me, as I posted upthread, the imprtant features of 4e go to pacing, resource management and the like. These are collective things.It's like saying a game will at one and the same time give player A the feel of player-driven, scene-framing play and give player B the feel of GM-driven, Adventure Path play. Just because I can say the words doesn't mean I'm describinb an actually feasible state of affairs.I am not in this situation. So if that's what D&Dnext has to offer, I don't need its services.Over the course of my GMing career I have run B/X, 1st ed AD&D, smatterings of 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, and 4e for the past four years. I also spent nearly 20 years GMing Rolemaster using mostly D&D story elements (Greyhawk and Oriental Adventures especially). And I have GMed other systems too.I enjoy fantasy RPGig very much, including its gonzo D&D version. But I have no particular attachment to D&D as a mechanical system. I came back to D&D with 4e because the system offered me something I was looking for - gonzo fantasy with robust mechanics to reduce the need for GM force in pacing and adjuciation. When my 4e game finishes I'm hoping to run Burning Wheel, using some of the Penumbra d20 modules as story elements. (They have a gritty tone that I think will suit Burning Wheel.) If WotC puts out any decent adventures for D&Dnext I'll happily buy them, but won't feel any special compulsion to run them using that system: when I had a brief stint at GMing 3E I was running old classic D&D adventures (some stuff from an old White Dwarf, plus Castle Amber); when I ran Bastion of Broken Souls (a 3E module) it was in Rolemaster; and when I ran Night's Dark Terror (an old B/X module) it was for 4e.I don't have any angst or vitriol. All I'm saying is that I'm looking at a game which has very little to offer me.Over the course of 2008 it became very clear to me, between the WotC information and my reading of Worlds & Monsters, that 4e was a game I was interested in playing. In particular, it became clear that it was a game that took the insights of indie RPG design, and the importance of the metagame, seriously. So what you are calling a "fiasco" was, for me, a time of optimism in fantasy RPGing.It seems equally clear to me now that D&Dnext is not such a game, and I have no cause to be optimistic about it from my point of view. It's none of my business, of course, what games others play. All I'm pointing out is why D&Dnext seems to offer little to me as an RPG.</blockquote>

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