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?

And yet so many of us used 3e to play extremely entertaining games (and not just DnD) and had no problems with the quantity of rules, mainly because we didn't feel compelled to use every single rules that was created for it at once. Just because there were lots of mechanics didn't mean that you had to use them all or that they were all bad. For me, the mechanics central to playing characters in 4e, the powers, are horrible. Completely divorced from imagination and the game world and there simply to have "cool powers" with no other thought put into them. It's shit.

Quote from: Sigmund;366306And yet so many of us used 3e to play extremely entertaining games (and not just DnD) and had no problems with the quantity of rules, mainly because we didn't feel compelled to use every single rules that was created for it at once. Just because there were lots of mechanics didn't mean that you had to use them all or that they were all bad.

Yes, of course. Note that I used the word "awesome." That was for good reason; 3e was and is a very good game. That said, I have no interest in discussing 3e vs. 4e in this thread, and I apologize for the fact that I'm not going to address your criticism further.

Quote from: Sigmund;366223I 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: 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.

Agreed, these could be houseruled, but they are indicative of a problem I find with the larger framework of the 4E rules that make the game more of a game and less of an immersive experience for role-playing.  

This does come back to my personal reasons why I play RPGs, which I think are shared by many others. We play RPGs for the fun of escapism, of being a character in another world far removed from our everyday lives. Powers break the fourth wall in a game and crush immersion for me. They turn the combat of a game into chess moves instead of characters fighting.

To me, this detrimentally affects role-playing and 4E does not support role-playing to my satisfaction.

Now, the response to this that I keep hearing is that the role-playing in 4E happens in between the rules or happens without rules there to support it. In that case, then you could call checkers or poker a role-playing game because you can use role-playing to enhance those games as well. It still would not make checkers a RPG, however.

Quote from: jeff37923;366320Agreed, these could be houseruled, but they are indicative of a problem I find with the larger framework of the 4E rules that make the game more of a game and less of an immersive experience for role-playing.  

This does come back to my personal reasons why I play RPGs, which I think are shared by many others. We play RPGs for the fun of escapism, of being a character in another world far removed from our everyday lives. Powers break the fourth wall in a game and crush immersion for me. They turn the combat of a game into chess moves instead of characters fighting.

To me, this detrimentally affects role-playing and 4E does not support role-playing to my satisfaction.

Now, the response to this that I keep hearing is that the role-playing in 4E happens in between the rules or happens without rules there to support it. In that case, then you could call checkers or poker a role-playing game because you can use role-playing to enhance those games as well. It still would not make checkers a RPG, however.

I with you 100% here.  In my personal experience, the quality of role-playing in my primary group has diminished, and, completely fallen off the map for several of the players in my group.  Sometimes I feel like we're playing a game of Axis & Allies in that we are just controlling tokens on a battle board.  They love and are eating up the tactical combat aspect of the game, and that has become the sole focus.  Role-playing is an incidental byproduct used to justify character re-tooling and magic item acquisition and/or swapping.

Quote from: Drohem;366323I with you 100% here.  In my personal experience, the quality of role-playing in my primary group has diminished, and, completely fallen off the map for several of the players in my group.  Sometimes I feel like we're playing a game of Axis & Allies in that we are just controlling tokens on a battle board.  They love and are eating up the tactical combat aspect of the game, and that has become the sole focus.  Role-playing is an incidental byproduct used to justify character re-tooling and magic item acquisition and/or swapping.

That makes me sad.

Quote from: LordVreeg;366325That makes me sad.

Me too, brother, me too.

Quote from: Drohem;366323I with you 100% here.  In my personal experience, the quality of role-playing in my primary group has diminished, and, completely fallen off the map for several of the players in my group.  Sometimes I feel like we're playing a game of Axis & Allies in that we are just controlling tokens on a battle board.  They love and are eating up the tactical combat aspect of the game, and that has become the sole focus.  Role-playing is an incidental byproduct used to justify character re-tooling and magic item acquisition and/or swapping.

So why don't you fix it?

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;366284But 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

I completely agree with this. I think the issue is in the way 4e decided to shift the goalposts (and follow a tradition that at least started with 3e in this regard, if not earlier with Players' Options or the Survival Guides, or even Unearthed Arcana*) to make a huge part of the game about the game system itself. 4e basically gets rid of all the luggage from previous eras to morph into a pure "gamist" experience.

Quote from: Drohem;366323I with you 100% here.  In my personal experience, the quality of role-playing in my primary group has diminished, and, completely fallen off the map for several of the players in my group.  Sometimes I feel like we're playing a game of Axis & Allies in that we are just controlling tokens on a battle board.  They love and are eating up the tactical combat aspect of the game, and that has become the sole focus.  Role-playing is an incidental byproduct used to justify character re-tooling and magic item acquisition and/or swapping.

That's exactly the bad tendencies the current design emphasizes, in my view. How many amongst your players are veterans of gaming and/or role-playing games, Drohem?

Now, imagine the type of influence it may have on newbies discovering what RPGs are and are not through 4e, for the very first time.

* My point between parenthesis is that this didn't come out of nowhere. I think 4e is the first iteration of the game to embrace the concept of "the rules *are* the game" right from the start to such an extent that it defines everything it does at the game table, though.

Quote from: Seanchai;366339So why don't you fix it?

My play style preferences are in the minority in the group and the will of the tribe prevails.

Quote from: Seanchai;366339So why don't you fix it?

Seanchai

The only way to fix something so ingrained within the body of the rules of 4E is to just not play 4E and choose another game that better fits your style of gaming.

Quote from: Benoist;366340How many amongst your players are veterans of gaming and/or role-playing games, Drohem?

Almost all of them.  We've been playing together since about 1986, with the exception of one who is the younger cousin of one of the other players.  I think he came into the group around 1988.

Quote from: jeff37923;366320Now, the response to this that I keep hearing is that the role-playing in 4E happens in between the rules or happens without rules there to support it. In that case, then you could call checkers or poker a role-playing game because you can use role-playing to enhance those games as well. It still would not make checkers a RPG, however.

I'm honest to god not asking this question to try and make a point.

How do the OD&D rules support roleplaying in ways that the 4e rules do not?

Quote from: Thanlis;366345I'm honest to god not asking this question to try and make a point.

How do the OD&D rules support roleplaying in ways that the 4e rules do not?

The premise of your question is wrong.

I do not think that the OD&D rules support role-playing in ways that 4E does not. However, OD&D was the first version of a RPG that has since evolved over 40 years to get to be 4E. During that evolution, the concentration of focus on the game of D&D has changed from the general (role-playing which includes combat) in OD&D to the specific in 4E (miniatures combat with occassional role-playing).

Quote from: RPGPundit;366284That "little bit of GNS" turned D&D4e into a fucking joke.

I don't think it's that bad of a game for people who enjoyed the default adventure-path modules from 3e, but I will agree that it is less versatile than the old d20 system, if you're looking for broad mechanics.

Whether or not the focused design is good or bad depends on the group.  I personally don't like it, but that's mostly because I hate the aesthetic and the core races and whatnot, and I've always had issues with the long combats the d20 system seems to suffer from.  The "dissociated" mechanics bug me, but no more than any of the oddities in 3.x.

The game itself, from a mechanical perspective, is fun and playable, I just don't like it enough to run a campaign with it.  I know plenty of people who have, though, and continue to do so.

The problem of 4e is that for the first time a RPG with a tactically rich combat system is now the most popular system.  Sure 3.0/3.5 had a lot of options but the situation with d20 is more like GURPS where you have to seek out the option and bolt them onto your campaign. In 4e the options are baked in from the get go.

This is coupled that the 4e rules are pretty much about combat and to a lesser extent about encounter resolution. It's support for roleplaying, and other non-combat activities makes it a throwback to the earliest RPGs.

There is nothing wrong with this nor does it force you to roleplay any less. Fantasy Hero, GURPS, Rolemaster, Runequest, Harnmaster, have all managed to have groups that supported roleplaying and non-combat actitivites despite having systems as complex or more complex than of 4e. And just as time consuming.

But the culture and company support that surrounds D&D 4e is causing a lot of problems for those wanted to use the game for a lot of roleplaying and non-combat stuff. In contrast GURPS 4e, a system familiar with,  despite it's complex rules options has always had a strong roleplaying component. It is not due just to mechanics much more in the examples, notes and sidebars that is found in every GURPS products.

Not to say that D&D 4e doesn't have some of that but it is present to a far higher degree and a better level of quality in GURPS Products.  For example GURPS Martial Arts which at it's hard is GURPS Combat on steroids but also contains a lot of useful information on the various martial arts and the context in which they developed.

D&D 4e fails in the roleplaying department because of the culture that surrounds the game. The dominance of the living campaign as it's public face. The type of adventures put out by Wizards as examples of 4e play.

You can start a group, use the 4e rules and have any type of game you want. With any level of lethality or focus. Provided that your fellow gamers don't bring the general assumptions of the general 4e community.