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Message: <blockquote data-quote="13garth13" data-source="post: 5828721" data-attributes="member: 16979">To reiterate what a number of posters have alluded to/out-and-out stated:  Yes, trying to maintain legacy and the "feel" of the game will no doubt hurt innovation (if by innovation, the original poster means new and shiny rules and conflict resolution mechanics that are different from what came before), but the latter question is by far the more important, and the long and short of it is, I don't really care if it hurts innovation.I was never more surprised (yeah, I know, nice little bubble I've got going here <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) during the roll-out of 4E when all these posters appeared decrying Vancian magic and other sacred cows as if these were at best vestigial organs and at worst objectively bad pieces of game design.   And I just didn't get it.   How on earth does someone enjoy playing D&D and not enjoy the various tropes and fundamental elements of it?  If so many "sacred cows" bother you, why on earth are you even playing the bloody game.Needless to say, despite so-called innovations, I really didn't enjoy playing 4E (not to the extent of some posters of the time, and goodness knows I didn't feel the need to post about my dislike.....hey, why take a whiz on someone else's fun?) and it really didn't feel like the old game to me.For what it's worth (shockingly little ;-) ), I didn't like all the "innovations" of 3E either, and there's many things I would happily go back to (item saving throws, harsher poisons and curses, fireballs that expand to fill the available cubic footage allotted to them etc etc) but I'm afraid my players have gotten quite used to the multitudinous options of 3.X and would balk at a return to 1E/2E play, despite the fact that I think I probably enjoy it more than 3.X.   Whatever, I still enjoy DMing 3.X (yes, even at high levels....I've never really experienced the problems that are supposedly attendant to high level 3.X play, and I've DMed for characters in the low epic levels) and I'm not entirely sure I'd be willing to give up its bells and whistles either come to think of it.There's something that the more vociferous defenders of the latest edition (heck, all the vociferous defenders of ALL editions....but yeah, particularly 4E, since those individuals seem to be the most prone to bemoaning throwback gaming and "stagnation") need to remember and that is that the point of a game is to have FUN.   I enjoy the hell out of curling (love to play it, love to watch it, love it, LOVE IT!) but I can accept the fact that not everyone else enjoys it or even finds it remotely interesting.  And I'm OK with that!   Likewise, if someone is having fun with Vancian magic, and save-or-die effects, and all that other stuff which some posters tend to pillory, then that's your problem, not mine.  Be okay with other people's ideas of fun and let people have that kind of fun and stop trying to remove it from the gamebooks.   Don't like the Great Wheel?  Fine, but keep it in the game and remove it yourself in your house-rules for your own campaigns.   The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I don't think it's a huge surprise that the edition which stepped the furthest away from thirty years of history and game legacy (both rules and fluff/canon) and that seemed to try to impose its own (very, very particular) vision about what D&D play was all about had its market share stripped away by a not-so "innovative" game like Pathfinder.  There is no objective way to measure fun and you may think healing surges are the cat's meow, but if it bothers the heck out of the player (for whatever reason) then it doesn't matter if it is something new and different/innovative (for D&D) it is making the game un-fun for that player, and that person is not going to play the game if they're not having fun.I do appreciate that there are a lot of people for whom 4E "clicked" and it is the best thing since sliced bread to them, and that's totally cool, but some posters seem to act as if letting the rest of us get back the elements and tropes that made D&D feel like, well, D&D is something horribly retrograde, like we're going back to stoning heretics and believing that the Sun goes around the Earth.  Folks, it's a game.   And the point is to have fun.   And based on the life-cycle of 4E, and the horrendous loss of market share to Paizo's game, it should be painfully obvious that an awful lot of other people's ideas about what makes for a fun game do not sync up (at all) with what the latest edition had to offer, regardless of whether it was and still is a whole lotta fun for you.So, to sum up, yeah there probably won't be quite as much "innovation", but if it's a fun game and feels more like classic D&D, then hey, innovation can get stuffed <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.Cheers,ColinP.S.  And remember, there are supposed to be dials and modules and such to allow people to bring back whatever "innovative" aspects of their favourite edition they want, so it's really not a big deal if (for example) healing surges aren't on the core menu, because it will (supposedly) be rather a simple matter to integrate them back in, right?</blockquote>

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