Quote from: Sigmund;366202I'm wondering if the changes are much more attractive to DMs in general than they are to players or if I'm just reading too much into this shit.

No, you hit the nail on the head.  Of course, there are many reason why 4e D&D might be more attractive to a particular person.  However, if taken in the light of a GM coming from 3.x D&D over to 4e D&D, then, yes, it is much more attractive when standing side by side to 3.x D&D.

Quote from: Drohem;366206No, you hit the nail on the head.  Of course, there are many reason why 4e D&D might be more attractive to a particular person.  However, if taken in the light of a GM coming from 3.x D&D over to 4e D&D, then, yes, it is much more attractive when standing side by side to 3.x D&D.

Yes and no.

One of the great drawbacks I find in 4E is the emphasis on combat over role-playing which to me is neatly emphasized by the removal of skills like Perform, Profession, and Craft that often acted as pathways to bring more PC-NPC interaction into the games.

Quote from: Drohem;366206No, you hit the nail on the head.  Of course, there are many reason why 4e D&D might be more attractive to a particular person.  However, if taken in the light of a GM coming from 3.x D&D over to 4e D&D, then, yes, it is much more attractive when standing side by side to 3.x D&D.

I agree.  I wonder if 3.x trained DMs to think inside the box too much.  The only reason I'm running Pathfinder right now is because I canned the EL rubbish and gauge encounters mostly on the fly, so that now the game prep doesn't feel like the homework I have to grind through before I can do something fun.

Quote from: jeff37923;366212Yes and no.

One of the great drawbacks I find in 4E is the emphasis on combat over role-playing which to me is neatly emphasized by the removal of skills like Perform, Profession, and Craft that often acted as pathways to bring more PC-NPC interaction into the games.

I agree with what you're saying here Jeff, but I don't see this particular issue as that big of a deal, because these skills are simple to house-rule back into 4th since they don't do much to affect the combat mechanics. For me 4e's poor gameplay experience starts and ends with the chargen and power mechanics. Don't like em at all. Everything else I think I could live with or houserule, but the powers and their implementation are just too big.

Quote from: Hairfoot;366214I agree.  I wonder if 3.x trained DMs to think inside the box too much.

Which is a shame, because Monte Cook has admitted on several occassions they did a shit job of explaining that the "mastery" they talked about also applied to DMing, and that once you got a feel for how things should be, you could just run with it and wing things as you went.  

Literally, everything in the 3.x DMG was meant as a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule.  The magic item creation systems, etc., they weren't supposed to be law, even if many people treated them that way.  The whole reason for the seemingly "bloated" game was because they thought they were giving new DMs good starting points for making their own decisions, but unfortunately, as always, people relied to heavily on the RAW.  Kind of a failed experiment of the polar opposite of throwing the LBBs in front of a new DM.

Not that it's any less messy in the learning stages.

Quote from: jeff37923;366212Yes and no.

One of the great drawbacks I find in 4E is the emphasis on combat over role-playing which to me is neatly emphasized by the removal of skills like Perform, Profession, and Craft that often acted as pathways to bring more PC-NPC interaction into the games.

I understand what you are saying.  The loss of those skills is one of my biggest pet peeves with 4e D&D too.  However, as Sigmund pointed out, it's fairly easy fix for those that see the loss of those skills as a problem.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;366107That is correct. Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering sure, GNS, no.

There is no "embracing" GNS when it comes to design.  It's a tool.  You take from it what you want, and you either toss it, or use it to help think about how to improve designs.  There's no "Well I'll only use GNS logic for this one!"  No.  It's a matter of thinking about the larger picture of things, and the model they've come up with is a way to organize the bigger picture (though not the only way).

Quote from: MearlsGNS doesn't necessarily give you a direct insight into how to make D&D better.

But, it does make you think about larger structures of the game. What is the purpose of the D&D rules? How do the DM and players interact? In looking to improve D&D, it would be foolish to leave any tool unused.

*snip*

The interesting thing about GNS and D&D is that it helps sort things into their proper place. Our discussion of alignment from a few weeks back is a good example: alignment is in a weird place because it says it does one thing, looks like it does another, and actually does a third. If you look at the mechanics in terms of theory, it helps you see that and maybe implement an improvement.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=232684&page=35

So while D&D doesn't exactly conform to the specifics of GNS, I think it's fair to say that the thought-processes involved in Forge discussion helped influence the direction D&D4 went in.  I think the result of the more focused design and the realization that yes, you can lower the priority of the sim elements and make an ok game (even if they pissed off all the people who do like those elements, though it pleases people like you who don't enjoy that type of "world physics" stuff).

FWIW, I do enjoy some minor sim/world emulation that quite a few Forgites seem to hate, and I don't take their theories as 100%, undeniable truth (I dislike a ton of Forge games, and 4e isn't my cup of tea).  I see it as one method of thinking, that's not going to work for everyone, but has helped produce interesting designs and can be useful in the right hands.  All I'm suggesting is that it's very probable that certain design priorities and methods used were influenced by Forge discussions/theory, and that may be why some people here object to that line of thinking -- it doesn't matter if a WotC designer is saying the same thing in plain English without the jargon, they're still saying the same thing and the people who dislike those ideas aren't going to like them any better, even if GNS or Forge never come up in the discussion of design.

so are you admitting the fat beard, lawn crapper, cat piss men, hippies swine "forge" had some large mind share in creating 4e.anbody can spot the tactics of the forge with their attempt to redefine language and attack anybody who doesn't agree with the redefinition as some sort of brain dead imbecile.

Quote from: steelmax73;366243so are you admitting the fat beard, lawn crapper, cat piss men, hippies swine "forge" had some large mind share in creating 4e.anbody can spot the tactics of the forge with their attempt to redefine language and attack anybody who doesn't agree with the redefinition as some sort of brain dead imbecile.

You need to work on the punctuation.

Quote from: steelmax73;366243so are you admitting the fat beard, lawn crapper, cat piss men, hippies swine "forge" had some large mind share in creating 4e.anbody can spot the tactics of the forge with their attempt to redefine language and attack anybody who doesn't agree with the redefinition as some sort of brain dead imbecile.

Just in case I do need to clarify:

I never said large, I just believe the ideas probably influenced some of the design and that may be why many here may object to the direction 4e took in some of its aspects. That's a far cry from Edwards walking into Rob Heinsoo or Andy Collin's house and forcing him to sign an "I love GNS" statement.

I'm merely trying to rationalize why 4e took the radical steps it did in focusing on the "gamey" aspects and why so many people find those changes objectionable.  "It's just a game" doesn't really work, since plenty of people have had fun with games that focus on world-emulation and rationalizing in-game events (and still do, considering how popular Exalted is out of all the White-Wolf games).

Also:

Cocaine.  It's a helluva drug.

Quote from: Drohem;366232I understand what you are saying.  The loss of those skills is one of my biggest pet peeves with 4e D&D too.  However, as Sigmund pointed out, it's fairly easy fix for those that see the loss of those skills as a problem.

Also, bringing this thread back on topic, one of the biggest similarities between 4e and OD&D.

yah its abit stream of mind not any kind of literary work.

Quote from: Peregrin;366246Just in case I do need to clarify:

I never said large, I just believe the ideas probably influenced some of the design and that may be why many here may object to the direction 4e took in some of its aspects. That's a far cry from Edwards walking into Rob Heinsoo or Andy Collin's house and forcing him to sign an "I love GNS" statement.

But the issue is that GNS utterly poisons anything it touches, because its based on fundamentally INCORRECT premises. So you can't think "a little about GNS" without rejecting it out of hand; either you don't use GNS, or GNS ends up affecting everything you do.  Its like if you spend time thinking "a little" about how Redheads are racially superior to all other humans and the Belgians should probably be sent to gas chambers; that's going to end up tainting everything else you do.
Also, what exactly does GNS "teach" about D&D? Essentially, it claims:
1. D&D has been doing it WRONG all this time.
2. The "right" way to do D&D would be to SEVERELY LIMIT IT compared to what it was before.
3. The direction this limit should take is towards PURELY MECHANIC-FOCUSED "GAMISM".

The overall effect to the game is absolutely devastating. The game that has probably throughout its history been used in the most versatile combinations of styles and campaigns of any RPG ever is forcibly reduced by people influenced by GNS into a die-rolling game where the mechanic is king and the point is completely divorced from anything to do with setting or even plot.

That "little bit of GNS" turned D&D4e into a fucking joke.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;366284Also, what exactly does GNS "teach" about D&D? Essentially, it claims:
1. D&D has been doing it WRONG all this time.
2. The "right" way to do D&D would be to SEVERELY LIMIT IT compared to what it was before.
3. The direction this limit should take is towards PURELY MECHANIC-FOCUSED "GAMISM".

But...

"what it was before" makes no sense. Which D&D are we talking about? The awesome behemoth that was third edition, with rules for everything from crafting wagonwheels to getting out of bed in the morning? Not to mention stairs? Or the patchwork set of rules that came directly after Chainmail? Or the relatively stripped down, coherent boxed sets of the early days?

Quote from: Thanlis;366292But...

"what it was before" makes no sense. Which D&D are we talking about? The awesome behemoth that was third edition, with rules for everything from crafting wagonwheels to getting out of bed in the morning? Not to mention stairs? Or the patchwork set of rules that came directly after Chainmail? Or the relatively stripped down, coherent boxed sets of the early days?

Most arguments that claim 'x' or 'y' destroyed or perverted 'D&D' but fail to maention whcih particular versions or attributes of that multigenerational behemoth lose any validity.  there are certainly things that I think one or another version does better or worse, or more extremely than other versions.  I am not saying Pundit is wrong at all, because I believe he has a very valid point in some ways, but his point would be better made if he explained GNS as pushing farther in one direction of a 'gamist' continuum than any other version of D&D has ever gone in the past, to the detriment of some parts of the game.