We hates 4th ed DnD, we hates it precious!

[Saskwach]

*snip*

Re: Stakes. That kind of game just doesn't seem to be for me. I think that fundamentally we don't think of the other's type of fun as double-plus ungood, but we feel the risks of the other style of play aren't personally acceptable. I distrust your style as it could turn into wish-fulfilment on the part of the players; you think my style could turn into DM fiat (which it can). I don't like that consequences of actions can be laid out before the actions; you don't like that a DM's hidden whim determines those consequences once the players have 'locked in their answer'. I (as a fascist pigdog) trust the DM; you (as a bleeding heart liberal) trust the players - or that's where we place the majority of our trust anyway. Neither style is a solution but a set of trade-offs. But the discussion is interesting so I'll pretend like I'm not reasonable.

Re: Handwaving. I've had that issue come into games before. As a beginner DM (which I'll admit I still am) I made an incredibly egregious mistake along these lines. Put simply, after a fight I decided I'd give one thing to each player that they'd appreciate. Three of the players were easily satisfied. The last was tricky: his character was so tweaked he needed nothing, and I was unsure whether to give him something less statty in case it could break the game (as qualitative effects do much easier than quantitative). It became ridiculous as I rooted through an inner inventory of what the dead guy might have out loud and to the player. Since then I realised the solution: fuck it, what's there is there. There's an assumption in your argument that the DM wants the players to climb the rock face. I now shun that assumption and whenever it appears in my thoughts before or during the game I take it out back and shoot it through the head.

Case in point, my new WFRP campaign (sadly on hiatus because our group is so damn busy). The players started out on the lowest level and I made a possible quest (among others) that they grabbed. It involved a Bestman raiding party that had holed up in a Roadwarden fort (think highway police). When I designed the fort I asked myself one question: "How would a real Beastman raiding party holed up in a fort look?" I always stressed to myself that if my thinking on that question ever looked mechanically difficult then I'd ignore that and continue. (Obviously there's a line at which I'm handing their low level characters Dragons, but still.) I asked myself how high the parapets should be, not how hard they should be to scale for a level 0 character; the answer to the second question came from the first. This way I could be sure I was never handwaving for the sake of the players: either the world made something possible or it didn't. There are several ways into the castle, some of which I know, some of which the players might find - but none of them is The Way that I have mathematically determined to be safe.

As a result, the fort is actually quite deadly. There's dozens of Beastmen crawling around the place and even a (mostly disinterested) Dragon Ogre on the parapets.

But there are mitigating factors. It's the middle of winter in the Empire, which mean it's pouring down with rain and the castle is being blasted with lightning - perfect for sneaking. The Dragon Ogre, as a Dragon Ogre, wants to catch some of that lighting, so he's on the front gate, catching some megajoules. The Storms of Chaos are abating, so the Chaos Gods are recalling the DO soon. The players, for their part, have thought not in terms of what I want to be possible, but what the world's implying. There's a fort with an unknown number of Beastmen. That could be tough. So they've hired some help and are taking a good look at the fort. Before they do anything I'm sure they'll have a good plan to enter the place. And if the plan goes pear-shaped they'd better fix it or run fast because I ain't saving them. The Warhammer world wouldn't, so neither will I.

All this is a long-winded way of presenting my style of play which I feels completely avoids the problem of handwaving. It's not the only style and it presents certain difficulties to 'telling a story' (which I'm resistant to) but the issue of handwaving isn't there.

 

[Alex_P]

I distrust your style as it could turn into wish-fulfilment on the part of the players; you think my style could turn into DM fiat (which it can). I don't like that consequences of actions can be laid out before the actions; you don't like that a DM's hidden whim determines those consequences once the players have 'locked in their answer'. I (as a fascist pigdog) trust the DM; you (as a bleeding heart liberal) trust the players - or that's where we place the majority of our trust anyway. Neither style is a solution but a set of trade-offs. But the discussion is interesting so I'll pretend like I'm not reasonable.

Hmm, I wouldn't say I distrust fiat per se. I'm trying to find the best expression here. I guess it's more like I feel like I'm softballing it unless I put some game-mechanical weight behind the narrative "cockpunching" (piling on the bad stuff).

But, yes, I place the majority of trust and authority in the group as a whole, not the GM independently. That's because, compared to typical standards, I'm a lazy GM and a pushy player. I always want to drive at least a little but I always want a lot of feedback from the other players as I go, too. As a GM, I really hate the idea of being "the storyteller" (like, the one and only) more than anything else.

There's an assumption in your argument that the DM wants the players to climb the rock face. I now shun that assumption and whenever it appears in my thoughts before or during the game I take it out back and shoot it through the head.

It's more of a response thing: a player wants to climb the rock face and I want to make it interesting (if there's some goal on the other side; otherwise I'm content to elide the whole thing without engaging the game mechanics or spending more than a sentence or two describing it).

-- Alex

 

[Alex_P]

Here's a repost of something I wrote in response to the "question of the week" on the TRPG chat group. I think it fits well here:

D&D 4th Edition doesn't deserve most of the shit it gets.

That's not to say that it doesn't have some deep flaws; just that those flaws don't match up with what its Internet haters usually talk about.

For example, the game's handling of non-combat skills isn't all that different from 3rd of 2nd Edition's. I'd argue that it's stronger because of built-in mechanics for turning a set of skill checks into a dramatic scene ("skill challenges").

The common line of "It's like an MMORPG" is highly subjective even for games criticism, of course, so I can't say that's flat-out wrong. Probably someone somewhere has said that based on a thoughtful and careful comparison of the two. Most of the time, though, it comes of as an ill-considered knee-jerk without any substance behind it. It's like an MMOG because the rulebook happened to acknowledge that the same game-mechanical party roles that have existed in the game from the beginning actually exist? It's like an MMOG because they tried to give every character some kind of special ability? Bah, gimme a break!

So, what's really missing?

Well, notice how many complaints focus on "roleplaying"(*). But the skill system's still there and you still kinda narrate and play-act on top of the rules and your character stats without having the game mechanics tell you how you feel -- that's pretty much roleplaying the way D&D players have always approached it. So, where's the missing "roleplaying" stuff? It's the character creation. 3rd Editions' multiclassing system, together with splatbooks crammed full of feats and new classes, isn't really there anymore. The 4e designers say they took it out due to game-balance and ease-of-play concerns.

I see that character creation system as the one thing that was really keeping the 3rd Edition audience together. Look at all the splatbooks: the game line was really selling on the strength of that system.

This is hard to pin down because, while the Internet allows people to share their "lonely fun" creations with each other, they seldom really talk openly about the "lonely fun" part of RPGs (the way making up worlds or characters or magic items can become more important than playing the game). But I think it's really the "lonely fun" stuff that's been driving the hobby -- or, at least, sales of products -- for many years.

For many players, 3rd Edition character creation was a de-facto "lifepath" system, where you could sit around and make up people by cherrypicking abilities for them from a big set of books and it would be a bit like having their lives laid out before you. (I would argue that taking that guy with a pre-developed future that he needs to follow to gain his special prestige class at level 7 and actually putting him into play had a disastrous effect on the game, though.) The "character concept" turned into this grandiose, beautiful, painstakingly-assembled thing. People loved to talk about them, maybe even more so than they liked to actually talk about their campaigns.

I think 4e's designers were right to hate that character creation system. It definitely does hurt the game's tactical balance, weigh the GM down with rules, and distract the players from the here-and-now. But, despite all that, it was really the biggest selling point of 3rd Edition D&D, while all that other stuff was stuff that D&D had been doing badly for years without really drawing many serious complaints from its players. Axing 3e's fancy character system necessarily meant alienating a big chunk of the old audience. Given 4e's respectable sales, I don't think that was, like, a mistake per se. I'm just trying to lay out what I see as the real origin of a lot of the edition-hate this time around.

Now, I hate that old character creation system, too. It took me a long time to really figure out that I hated it -- it's subtle and addictive and makes you feel like you're accomplishing a lot despite the fact you could have a lot more creative-fun if you just chucked the gamebook altogether. But, in its absence, I can look at 4th Edition and say "Okay, there's nothing about this game that really interests me". That realization makes me feel good. But it's not really saying anything positive about D&D to say that I get more out of 4th Edition by not-playing it than I got out of 3rd Edition by playing it.

__________
* - In quotes because I think "roleplaying" is a horribly vague term, not because I somehow think D&D isn't "real roleplaying" or something.

-- Alex

 

[McClaud]

I realize this is an old ass thread in terms of the Escapist, but -

My beef with 4e really has nothing to do with a difference in systems, since I never really cared about either 3.x or 4e. What happened was this:

I realized awhile ago when playing the d20 system that there are just other systems that work better. I myself like the Craft system present in Spycraft. It allows you to make a character that's not only interesting, but one that's fun to play. And it makes it super-easy for GMs to control the game while being fair and balanced. On top of that, it's not difficult and avoids using lazy challenge systems with bad rewards (which 4e seems to lean on - less punishment for PCs while driving them with Monty Haul syndrome). I cannot stand the wimpy challenge system of 4e or the at-will powers. And I absolutely detest Mike Mearls to the point I punched him in the nose once for his retarded "SIMPLE IS ALWAYS BETTER" bullshit.

This is why I'm liking Pathfinder mildly better than 3.x, and the upcoming Fantasycraft way way better than 4e. There's nothing inherently wrong with the beer and pretzel 4th edition. I liken it more to a miniatures/boardgame than an MMO any day (although anyone who has played WoW or EQ sees influences in 4e). 3.x is a dirty fetish, really. You can enjoy it if you like a bit of pain. But there are several better systems that work better and are more fun to play with greater flexibility.

I'd say D&D in general is a gateway drug to more refined designer drugs/RPGs. And older players will mock D&D later when they move on. They'll still secretly crave it, and maybe play it every once in awhile when there's nothing else available.

 

[Alex_P]

Honestly, the D&D I hate most right now is... Pathfinder.

I tried not to have a negative opinion. I was all like, "Okay, whatever, it's not for me just like 4th Edition is also not for me. I'll just accept that some people are really attached to 3rd Edition and that GSL/OGL turf-war stuff has made it viable for publishers to try to hold on to 3rd Edition as well."

But, after everyone was going around threadcrapping D&D threads here with posts about how great 3.x and Pathfinder are, I looked into it a bit more. And I'm very disappointed.

The game is, as promised, reheated 3rd Edition. No surprise. But the changes made to it seems kinda... well, random. Like, okay, they had this article about the bard. Paizo's writers altered the bard by... shortening the duration of bardsong? Huh? I don't recall anyone in the history of 3rd Edition every complaining the bardsong lasts too long. It was always more about how the bard's most prominent and iconic ability is almost entirely passive.
That's what the whole game feels like, to me: some guy's house rules -- some of which fix things, some of which break things harder, and some of which just add a bit of new "fluff" to a thing via game mechanics. It's like a book made out of those "ultimate" class rewrites fans used to post on forums. I look at Pathfinder and I can't find much actual, err, design.

It's really the fandom that kills it for me, though. The huge shitstorm over 4th Edition, the monumental bickering between fans struggling to define what it meant to be a 3rd-Edition/Pathfinder hold-out (search Paizo's forum for "CharOp"), the way a lot of the people really into Pathfinder seem to be absolutely obsessed with "support" -- something I've always found a bit distasteful and crappy about tabletop gaming to begin with. In other words, I feel like people are getting into it for all the wrong reasons, and being colossal shits about it on the Internet, too, which just brings out my contempt.

-- Alex

 

[Alex_P]

the upcoming Fantasycraft

Tell me more about this. Is it related to Spycraft?

-- Alex