From Spinachcat at the rpg site:
I love 4e because I love fantasy skirmish boardgames. I thought 3e sucked decayed donkey nuts and wails of rules lawyers as they bang their heads against the simplicity of 4e's design is pure music to my ears.
Makes sense to me; from what I've heard 4e does sound like a really good tactical combat game, and I've often thought that 3e sucked decayed donkey nuts too (although not in so many words - I actually think it sucked worse than having one's testicles flayed with a rusty scourge).
On similar lines (tactical fantasy skirmishes, that is - not flayed testicles), this post from Odyssey after finishing off a 4e encounter:
And then the whole party cheered.And finally from this thread, at story-games, which you might have to register to view:
First time that's ever happened in a game I ran. But their lives were on the line, in a way that isn't usual in my games. They were smart--they have the tank wall plus snipers strategy pretty much down now, are learning their powers and how to use them to help each other, and and made some really rather inspired use of readied and delayed actions.
As many people have already pointed out, abilities like "I hit this guy so hard that you can heal yourself" are pretty abstract. One thing that's actually real nice about this is that you have a lot of freedom to re-theme things, as we did with our ancient-India re-theming, precisely because the connection is so tenuous. We got into doing some pretty elaborate narrations for the results of our attacks. And when the rules did something weird, we would come up with an elaborate post-hoc fictional justification for it.
For example, our paladin was a devotee of the raven queen what's-her-name, the death goddess. (Maybe we should have made this into Kali or Yama...) The player explained that the reason he can heal us by hitting enemies is because when we're wounded, invisible raven death spirits begin to crowd around us, waiting to carry our souls away if we die. When he hits the monster, he's like "Hey raven spirits! over here! This guy!" So they leave us alone (causing us to recover from the brink of death) in order to crowd around the newly wounded. Hey, that's pretty cool.
(I've noticed that Warhammer 40k players do this fictional-justification-for-weird-rules-result thing a lot, too. The rules feed into the fiction, but as a wargame, the fiction has no way to feed back into the rules, so it's just something you do to add extra color. I don't know if it's role-playing or not but it's still fun.)
I think that definitely is role playing, and it does sound fun. The fun is arguably in spite of the rules rather than because of them, but nevertheless.
Anyway, what's the conclusion of all this? Well, I'm not sure I'll ever play 4e, but it's nice to know that it isn't the horror show I was expecting.
The thing that irks me about everyone commenting on how easy it is to "get into the story" with 4e is that that's been true of every edition of D&D. The only difference is that now, for some reason, people who previously sneered at the game have actually decided to play it as it was always intended to be played and as it was played even back in the benighted days before Ron Edwards had his ephiphanies. None of what those guys at Story Games are crowing about was absent, even in the now-reviled 3e, and yet they act as if WotC has discovered fire.
ReplyDeleteMy problems with 4e have very little to do with it as a game. I have no doubt it's a blast to play and I'd never say it wasn't an RPG, because it clearly is. My problems with the game have to do with the way it has rejected its literary and historical origins, thus reducing "D&D" to a mere brand name. And it grows tiresome to read commentary from people who clearly never liked or understood previous editions of D&D and now hail 4e as some kind of revolution in gaming. It's like they think history began in 2000 or something.
Feh.
Heh...
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite as cranky as James on this topic, but I actually find the comments about how great RP is with 4e amusing. If I actually included more combat in my D&D, I'd probably hop into 4e with both feet, and I'm toying with the idea of using random tables to create dungeons for 4e that my friends and I can play through without the need for a DM.
That said, no 4e for me. My players would lynch me if I tried to foist the 4e version of wizards on them. ;)
- Brian
And it grows tiresome to read commentary from people who clearly never liked or understood previous editions of D&D and now hail 4e as some kind of revolution in gaming.
ReplyDeleteI think it's to do with the fact that those people are usually into forge-theory, and the main designers of 4e seem to have taken a bit of forge-theory on board. It's like a validation for them.
You're right that 4e is no different from the other editions in terms of "getting into the story" - but that's the key: no different. To hear some of the people at places like dragonsfoot talk, you'd think that 4e was just a pen and paper version of World of Warcraft.
To hear some of the people at places like dragonsfoot talk, you'd think that 4e was just a pen and paper version of World of Warcraft.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's no reason it couldn't be and still be a RPG. But a lot of grognards don't actually know much about WoW or computer games generally and so they simply become shorthand for "games I don't like."
That said, I think it's beyond question that 4e is the first edition of D&D whose mechanics draw inspiration from electronic media. That's not necessarily cause for condemnation, but it's an example of how this edition really does stray far more from the game's roots than any previous one.
That said, I think it's beyond question that 4e is the first edition of D&D whose mechanics draw inspiration from electronic media. That's not necessarily cause for condemnation, but it's an example of how this edition really does stray far more from the game's roots than any previous one.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I agree. Although I still think the biggest gap is between 2nd and 3rd edition. This is just a continuation of that break.
I only wish the break would be made official and WotC would say "Hey, let's just let people publish things for the older editions if they want, because what we have is actually two completely different games."
I suppose I agree. Although I still think the biggest gap is between 2nd and 3rd edition. This is just a continuation of that break.
ReplyDeleteMechanically, 3e is more of a break from the previous edition than 4e is, without question. However, 3e seems to have been designed with an eye toward new mechanics that tried to reproduce the gameplay of previous editions on a more rational basis. 4e, on the other hand, has no such interest, instead being designed for balance and "fun" without regard for whether this created results at all similar to those of previous editions.