Quote from: Sigmund;366399The reason I don't take this much into account when comparing OD&D and 4e for myself is that both can be used to do campaigns, or do pure dungeon crawl, or many other variations without much trouble. Pretty much any RPG can, from the lightest of the light to the heaviest... it's just a matter of how much work ya wanna have to put into it. So sure, 4e can be like OD&D in that respect just fine, but I'm still never going to see any substantial similarities because when I sit down at the table and start rolling dice, the games don't even remotely resemble one another.

You are right, but I'm talking about the shift from 0d&d to Ad&D here...Tithing, keeps, guilds, etc, and RULES FOR SAME.  This was part of a rules shift that dealt with roleplay issues...

There are some other major differences I have not had a chance to get into again...damnit, more work...

Quote from: ggroy;366401We never really bothered with stuff like that in my previous 1E AD&D campaigns.

By the time the players slayed the dragon, saved the princess, etc ... the game didn't seem so exciting anymore.  Typically we played another different game afterward.

My games always wound up with the high level character building something that impacted the campaign world. I encouraged this and it served as background for the next campaign in the same setting. Something everybody got a kick out of.

If you have a copy of the Majestic Wilderlands the whole mess in Viridistan is because players killed the emperor. Nome is a kingdom founded by a players. And the South march of City-State is written at the mid point of another campaign where the player was high level and busy making his mark.

I recall the highest we ever played to was level 11 or 12, from starting at level 1.

This was the case for both 1E AD&D and 3E/3.5E D&D.

A bunch of times we made up high level characters and started from something like level 20, but those games never really lasted long.

Quote from: LordVreeg;366404You are right, but I'm talking about the shift from 0d&d to Ad&D here...Tithing, keeps, guilds, etc, and RULES FOR SAME.  This was part of a rules shift that dealt with roleplay issues...

I LOVE this aspect of the game, btw. From the price lists to build your keep in OD&D to the more developed treatment of AD&D, the whole idea of reaching nominal level and establishing your stronghold, abbey, guild or whatever is something I always loved in the game, and was always sad to see neglected, even ditched, in recent versions of the game.

Quote from: estar;366405My games always wound up with the high level character building something that impacted the campaign world. I encouraged this and it served as background for the next campaign in the same setting. Something everybody got a kick out of.

If you have a copy of the Majestic Wilderlands the whole mess in Viridistan is because players killed the emperor. Nome is a kingdom founded by a players. And the South march of City-State is written at the mid point of another campaign where the player was high level and busy making his mark.

A few times I played for a few weeks in some 1E games where the players were trying to do something like this.  These game didn't last very long for the most part.

From what I could figure out, the other players were largely the hack and slash types and didn't seem as interested in playing games which involved building a stronghold (or something else big).  Building a stronghold didn't seem as exciting to them, as killing things and taking all their stuff.

Quote from: ggroy;366410From what I could figure out, the other players were largely the hack and slash types and didn't seem as interested in playing games which involved building a stronghold (or something else big).  Building a stronghold didn't seem as exciting to them, as killing things and taking all their stuff.

Yeah had to deal with that issue. The basic trick was to let them continue to hack and slash but make it with a purpose. Then combine it with giving them rewards other than treasure and gold. Rewards that caused them become invested in the campaign. Then they cared enough protecting their "assets" which lead them to taking proactive measure to shape my setting.

This approach often requires a little work to find out what interested each players. Eventually I found a hook into each player that played my game and went on from there.

Quote from: estar;366400Mmm something to go in my Sandbox Fantasy Campaign project that I am working on.

In my games my players tell me there is a distinct feel between when I run a city, vs wilderness, vs dungeon. Should figure out what I do and see if there any useful aids I get write up.

For that matter, games I've played in the past in planar settings didn't feel much different than a generic dungeon crawl, other than fighting different types of monsters like demons, etc ...

Somehow the generic dungeon crawl "feel" remains the same, in so many D&D games.

Quote from: estar;366348The 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.

Just to say that's a really good way of putting it. I'm not saying everyone shares this assessment, but for those who do (like myself) you've expressed it very well.

I also think that if you compare Martial Power 1 with Martial Power 2 you'll see that WotC received a sufficient amount of customer feedback along this vein - enough for them to include ruminations on the martial power source as such, side-bars addressing the now fairly dated complaint of dissociative mechanics ('how come I can stab in THIS way only 1/day?'), a greater effort to diversify two PCs playing the same class build by recourse to weapon choice and fighting style, and so on.

The author of Martial Power 1, Rob Heinsoo, even lamented the fact that they hadn't written that first splat with more roleplaying advice as they did later on with Primal Power.

In short, I think WotC realizes that an opinion like estar's above is fairly widespread among their potential customers and deserved to be addressed.

In a sense, that's what I'm missing from some of the current 4e discussions on this board. It would be insane to expect people who're only mildly interested in it to pick up on the latest product development, but at the same time -as someone who does follow the edition's development- I do find it tiresome to read the same claims as in early 2008. As I say, it's stupid to expect people turned off 4E ever since Keep on the Shadowfell to keep up with product development, so don't get me wrong. Also, some things are so hard-coded into the first 3 core books that they won't change, no matter how much supplements will be released. I AM curious, however, whether the 'Essentials' relaunch of 4E will present the game in a more roleplaying-oriented way.

Quote from: Windjammer;366434I also think that if you compare Martial Power 1 with Martial Power 2 you'll see that WotC received a sufficient amount of customer feedback along this vein - enough for them to include ruminations on the martial power source as such, side-bars addressing the now fairly dated complaint of dissociative mechanics ('how come I can stab in THIS way only 1/day?'), a greater effort to diversify two PCs playing the same class build by recourse to weapon choice and fighting style, and so on.

The author of Martial Power 1, Rob Heinsoo, even lamented the fact that they hadn't written that first splat with more roleplaying advice as they did later on with Primal Power.

In short, I think WotC realizes that an opinion like estar's above is fairly widespread among their potential customers and deserved to be addressed.

In a sense, that's what I'm missing from some of the current 4e discussions on this board. It would be insane to expect people who're only mildly interested in it to pick up on the latest product development, but at the same time -as someone who does follow the edition's development- I do find it tiresome to read the same claims as in early 2008. As I say, it's stupid to expect people turned off 4E ever since Keep on the Shadowfell to keep up with product development, so don't get me wrong. Also, some things are so hard-coded into the first 3 core books that they won't change, no matter how much supplements will be released. I AM curious, however, whether the 'Essentials' relaunch of 4E will present the game in a more roleplaying-oriented way.

I'm sorry if the "dated" idea of the mechanics being disassociated is boring you, but for me that's the main reason I dislike the game. Despite any "fixes" I've seen, when I sit down at the table and try to play, the powers and how they work just irritate the fuck out of me. I don't care it that's dated, it is what it is.

I am with you though on being curious about the Essentials line. I will be checking that out I think. I'm not very hopeful, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Quote from: Windjammer;366434In short, I think WotC realizes that an opinion like estar's above is fairly widespread among their potential customers and deserved to be addressed.

In a sense, that's what I'm missing from some of the current 4e discussions on this board. It would be insane to expect people who're only mildly interested in it to pick up on the latest product development, but at the same time -as someone who does follow the edition's development- I do find it tiresome to read the same claims as in early 2008. As I say, it's stupid to expect people turned off 4E ever since Keep on the Shadowfell to keep up with product development, so don't get me wrong. Also, some things are so hard-coded into the first 3 core books that they won't change, no matter how much supplements will be released. I AM curious, however, whether the 'Essentials' relaunch of 4E will present the game in a more roleplaying-oriented way.

Without having any great knowledge of the latest developments, it sounds to me like Hasbro is trying to clunkily retrofit some flexibility to 4E in order to appeal to a cohort of gamers that it lost long ago with the high-handed release promotion of 4E.  Or perhaps the marketers are finding that its appeal is too narrow and want to bring in a new type of RPG-naive players.

Quote from: Peregrin;366374From my understanding, didn't dungeon-crawling with limited RP come first, and then later "role-playing" developed across different groups, with the more "there's more than what the rules talk about" (at least in terms of playstyle) view coming later?

Am crawling through this thread, so apologies if this has been covered. But there are a number of misconceptions being presented as history.

1. OD&D's third book is Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. It has rules on naval combat. There was already the implication (at least) in the published rules that there was a whole world "outside the dungeon".

2. In Arneson's own campaign, they were doing outdoor adventures before D&D was published. Read this, particularly the comments by robertthebald: http://mmrpg.zeitgeistgames.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=printview&t=594&start=0

Now I have to run but I also want to say:

Many here seem to think that the "break" in 4e is the detailed, boardgame-like rules. Speaking as an outsider (no 3e experience, let alone 4e) I would suggest that there's more to it than that. 4e has been received (rightly or wrongly) in a fundamentally different way than, say, GURPS. The full-on, battle-mat-based rules in GURPS are solidly simulationist, that is, their complexity exists to represent complex stuff in the game-world. The logic is: there's this stuff in the game world that could be important, let's make a rule for it. The rules in 4e are widely understood to be game mechanics for their own sake. It's not that someone tried to think of how to represent some "fact" in the imagined D&D world. Instead, someone thought of some colorful flavor text, and then used that as the inspiration for a rule that created an interesting mechanical interaction. [Edit: actually, before they thought of the flavor text, they probably decided they needed some sort of mechanical interaction, then they brainstormed the flavor text, and so on.]

Now someone is bound to say: "Explain HP for me." And the answer is: yes, OD&D had its own gamist qualities. Some people couldn't stand them and wound up playing Runequest or, eventually, GURPS. Others compromised. But 4e is seen as taking that "gamist" vector and magnifying it well beyond previous editions of D&D.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;366457Am crawling through this thread, so apologies if this has been covered. But there are a number of misconceptions being presented as history.

1. OD&D's third book is Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. It has rules on naval combat. There was already the implication (at least) in the published rules that there was a whole world "outside the dungeon".

2. In Arneson's own campaign, they were doing outdoor adventures before D&D was published. Read this, particularly the comments by robertthebald: http://mmrpg.zeitgeistgames.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=printview&t=594&start=0

Agreed. It's all already there.

That's why I was kind of surprised when Peregrin brought on the point that there was this insistance on the dungeon that gradually morphed into a campaign.

It is true that the game, from OD&D to AD&D in particular, opened its doors to the world beyond the dungeon even more widely as it evolved, but since these aspects were already there with OD&D (the Wilderness part of the equation), it seemed interesting that it was brought up when comparing OD&D to 4e, in particular, since 4e, in some respects, followed the "back to the dungeon" trend started with 3e. Maybe that's one of the similarities people see between the two.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;366457Many here seem to think that the "break" in 4e is the detailed, boardgame-like rules. Speaking as an outsider (no 3e experience, let alone 4e) I would suggest that there's more to it than that. 4e has been received (rightly or wrongly) in a fundamentally different way than, say, GURPS. The full-on, battle-mat-based rules in GURPS are solidly simulationist, that is, their complexity exists to represent complex stuff in the game-world. The logic is: there's this stuff in the game world that could be important, let's make a rule for it. The rules in 4e are widely understood to be game mechanics for their own sake. It's not that someone tried to think of how to represent some "fact" in the imagined D&D world. Instead, someone thought of some colorful flavor text, and then used that as the inspiration for a rule that created an interesting mechanical interaction.

Now someone is bound to say: "Explain HP for me." And the answer is: yes, OD&D had its own gamist qualities. Some people couldn't stand them and wound up playing Runequest or, eventually, GURPS. Others compromised. But 4e is seen as taking that "gamist" vector and magnifying it well beyond previous editions of D&D.

I completely agree. There's more to it than what we just covered. When you look at the Pundit's take on the issue, my particular take, and Sigmund's take upthread, for instance, you can see that we're all a bit like the blind monks trying to figure out what the elephant is based on the part we're currently able to touch. It's an interesting process in itself.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;366457But 4e is seen as taking that "gamist" vector and magnifying it well beyond previous editions of D&D.

Agree, while I think 4e is a fun game, as a RPG it's mechanics would not be my first choice.

So the general feeling I get, both from people here, and even some people who are into indie games/theory/whatever, is that 4th edition isn't providing enough "oomph" in terms of how you engage with the character or the game-world via the RAW or the playstyle (since taking away hard-coded mechanics nets you something quite different than 4e).  It seems similar to something I read over on the Alexandrian.

Basically, people who enjoy world emulation like engaging with their character through their interactions with the game-world (via the DM and other players).

People who enjoy story-creation can engage with their character through the narrative.

4e's most explicit way of engaging with your character is through "cool powers" and game-bits abstracted immensely, which can be extremely fun, mind you, but is not what a good portion of the RP community look for in a game.

4e's extreme focus on the game-bits seems to be creating a barrier for some people when it comes to engaging with the character, even for some people used to scene/high-level conflict resolution systems.  I'm not saying this to pass judgment on the game (as I've said before, I consider it to be good design in terms of what it does), just as a statement regarding certain types of players in relation to 4e's design.  It seems to be forcing a stance that a lot of players actively reject.  Some people who enjoy an immersive play-style that are more sensitive to meta mechanics keep getting batted out of the character's head (or from the viewpoint of being immersed in the story/game-world).  And honestly, it sucks when that happens, especially when you come to the game expecting what used to be one of the most flexible games in terms of play-style (as Pundit noted earlier) , and you find out it's really not working for you (even if you want it to).

If that's the case, then OD&D is a far cry from 4e, since it engages the player on completely different levels at different times.

Interesting take, Peregrin. Good stuff.