Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367635The ongoing attempt to shame people for liking D&D4 is a dead end.

If anyone cares to notice, you and Seanchai are the only 4E Zealots whose feet I hold to the fire over their obnoxious behavior. I don't give jgants or Thanlis any shit over liking 4E, then again they also don't act like infantile insufferable twats about liking 4E either. Maybe you should try to behave like they do.

And your claim to be persecuted by a few here is bunkum as well since you have been skewered on theRPGHaven for this same obnoxious behavior by James the Admin.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367638If you have a problem with me and can't stay on the actual D&D topic, take it to email.

I don't think so. Your obnoxious behavior is public, so response to it should also be public.

Guys, if you like the map in the OP, I hope you'll also find the two supplementory PDFs I've now put up useful as well. They go with the map - though, frankly, what you do with the map (if anything) is totally up to you.

Rest of post copy-pasted from now updated OP.

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UPDATE, March 16 2010: All Further Info to go with the Map now available for Download as PDF

I originally showed a scan of my (handwritten!) random encounter tables deeply buried in the thread, namely here. I have now made a neat layout of that which should be much more legible:

Random Encounter Tables for D&D 4E.

You still need to go to this link for instructions on how these tables work. In short, they don't give you individual monsters, but worked out 'encounter groups' which the tables reference by EL and (in parenthesis) page references to the MM1 or MM2 - so "3(19)" means 'EL 3 (check page 19 in MM 1)".

Other than that, I've collected all the hex entries into one PDF as well, which you can download here:

Hex Reference for the map above - 4E Silver Marches

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In the spirit of this post... please guys, if you have something constructive to say about the issues do so. If not, consider spending your efforts on something you can post here to give the rest of us something we can positively implement at our gaming tables.

No matter what game (within fantasy RPG) and what edition - Happy gaming!

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367638Are you sure it's not just you feeling an obsessive need to confront me?

Yes, I'm sure. It's not just "a few people", and they are not trying "to shame people for playing 4e".

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367638If you have a problem with me and can't stay on the actual D&D topic, take it to email.

Look around you, jackass. You'll see a lot of discussion going on without your constant bullshit. And the body of my email really is just one -very short- sentence: STOP BEING A DICK, PLEASE.

Windjammer wins this thread, and all theD&D threads, I think. Kudos to you, sir.

One of the reasons I find contemptuous things like edition wars is because they usualy involve people fighting over concepts and rules thatwer fucked up anyway from the start.

Round length in D&D / AD&D, as hitpoints, is a non-euclidean concept. It is better to avoid thinking about it, that way only lies madness. Most people will accept i as a given, and move on.

Quote from: Windjammer;367640In the spirit of this post... please guys, if you have something constructive to say about the issues do so. If not, consider spending your efforts on something you can post here to give the rest of us something we can positively implement at our gaming tables.

You're right.

Quote from: Imperator;367646Round length in D&D / AD&D, as hitpoints, is a non-euclidean concept. It is better to avoid thinking about it, that way only lies madness. Most people will accept i as a given, and move on.

That was my real point. Getting wrapped around the axle on a single way to do things and calling that "verisimilitude" is just pointless- you have to make concessions somewhere in order to make the game work. As soon as you say "no dissonance between editions is acceptable" it opens up the fact that there has always been dissonance.

Rounds work fine, movement works fine, it's the length of time that's the abstraction, and it doesn't matter as long as you get the relative relationships of movement, melee effects, and ranged combat effects right.

The only real issue I'd point to is that archery is a bit nerfed and it's a little harder to accept the interplay of "hit by an arrow" with "lost some abstract hit points" compared to "hit by a sword".

Benoist, Jeff, why don't you just put AM & Sett on Ignore? I think you'll notice that a lot of people don't bother to respond to them, whether it's because they've also got them on Ignore or because they've got the forbearance not to be baited on these topics.

Quote from: Imperator;367646Windjammer wins this thread, and all theD&D threads, I think. Kudos to you, sir.

One of the reasons I find contemptuous things like edition wars is because they usualy involve people fighting over concepts and rules thatwer fucked up anyway from the start.

Round length in D&D / AD&D, as hitpoints, is a non-euclidean concept. It is better to avoid thinking about it, that way only lies madness. Most people will accept i as a given, and move on.

The problem with what ya post here is that Windjammer has not and can not "win" the thread, because for most of us trying to at least loosely stay on topic it's not a competition, it's a discussion. We're not, for the most part, engaged in any kind of "edition wars". We're comparing editions to highlight what each of us sees as the similarities and differences in order to learn from them. I think it's for the most part been a great and informative discussion about what we as individual fans of RPGing in general and certain RPGs specifically like and dislike about the games, and even for some of us perhaps how far we're willing to go with disassociation and mechanical detail before the game starts to interfere with our enjoyment of the experience. I and apparently at least a few others have found it very informative. I will agree, however, that Windjammer's creative contributions do rock. If that's what you're referring to as "winning" the thread then I'll climb on-board with that

You know why 4e sucks?  Dragonborn tits.  They're not even fucking mammals.

I mean, goddamn.  Do the furries and scalies have to ruin everything?

Quote from: Peregrin;367653You know why 4e sucks?  Dragonborn tits.  They're not even fucking mammals.

I mean, goddamn.  Do the furries and scalies have to ruin everything?

Well, last year the real reason was you could kill 17 goblins. ANYONE at ANY TIME could kill 17 goblins. Disagreement just proves you are a zealot.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367648That was my real point. Getting wrapped around the axle on a single way to do things and calling that "verisimilitude" is just pointless- you have to make concessions somewhere in order to make the game work. As soon as you say "no dissonance between editions is acceptable" it opens up the fact that there has always been dissonance.

I don't get your point. Everybody agrees I think that dissonance always exists, no matter the system. The issue comes with the exact nature of the dissonances occurring, their extent, their relative frequency, and whether that all meshes or not with the expectations of the participants in the game.

As for "a single way to do things", I don't think anybody's saying that either. The argument about verisimilitude isn't that there's only one way to do it, which would be a ridiculous claim, but rather that there's no such thing as a dichotomy between "it's just a game" or "realism", but instead a world of shades of different ways to do verisimilitude in between.

I run different game systems, with different ways to do things. I played and ran many, many more game systems, each with a different way to do "verisimilitude". I don't feel particularly "wrapped around a single way to do things, calling it verisimilitude". I honestly don't know where you got that idea from.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367648That was my real point. Getting wrapped around the axle on a single way to do things and calling that "verisimilitude" is just pointless- you have to make concessions somewhere in order to make the game work. As soon as you say "no dissonance between editions is acceptable" it opens up the fact that there has always been dissonance.

The real crux of the issue is that each of us has different, some very different, ideas about what we are and are not willing to grant concessions on. For you, the dis-associative power mechanics are apparently not an issue at all, whereas for me they are the main stumbling-block, so I'm trying in some way to get closer to seeing them how you see them in order to overcome the stumbling-block and learn to enjoy the game. For some folks, and many of them also dislike 3.x for this, the length of combat is the problem, so tips and methods aimed at reducing the amount of time it takes to run combats are what they are looking for. Sometimes the only solutions to these issues is just sucking it up and playing a different game, but I'm still convinced that if we can learn to appreciate each game's strengths more, and handle what we perceive as it's weaknesses more, we all win in the end, because it just adds that many more folks to each game's pool of players. So, how can we bring 4e closer to providing an OD&D-like experience for those of us on the player's side of the screen? I really like camazotz's approach in post 220. I really think this kind of thing would help immensely in bringing the powers "down to earth" for me. Some sort of point system instead of the at-will/encounter/daily division would help as well. Finally, maybe trying combats without a mat, and developing methods of visualizing and dealing with the tactical mechanics without the distraction of applying them to a grid might interfere less for me as well. Making combats run with the fun parts of the powers without the tactical complexity, at least until I can internalize the changes enough to have them feel more natural might be what I need to do to develop a better appreciation for current DnD. It certainly bears thinking about.

Quote from: One Horse Town;367467I think he's stated before that it's not his favourite game - he just likes the ear biting and chest pounding.

Not really. D&D is not my favorite game (they include Amber, Everyway, Castle Falkenstein, Nobilis, and the like), but I could do without the endless arguments, bitching, etc.. Realistically speaking, however, that's never going to happen for folks who like 4e.

Seanchai

Quote from: Benoist;367463Opinions may come from somewhere though, and it's cool to be able to share and compare viewpoints, whether they are personal preferences based on experiences, considerations of this rather than that factual evidence... whatever the case may be.

Opinions do come from somewhere, but I'm not sure we're all on the same page about what's an opinion and what's not. Moreover, as you know, some opinions can be flat out wrong.

But that aside, we don't really share and compare viewpoints much, particularly when it comes to 4e.

Seanchai

Quote from: CRKrueger;367480All that being said, 4e is less immersive by design then earlier editions of D&D, that's not a value judgement, just a fact.

But see, I consider that about as factual as dogs who can speak.

Seanchai