Hypothetically, if 3E D&D was never created and WotC continued on instead with 2E AD&D all the way to 2010 today, would D&D still be a valuable and viable intellectual property on the market?

Quote from: Melan;374946I note, again, that this is not even the players' fault: it was the designers who engineered the game to be all about the "core experience" and relegated everything else to the box marked "filler". Surprise of surprises, it turns out in the end that while the "core experience" has the intensity, it doesn't have the complexity - it would have needed more to bring out all the rich flavour and possibilities, which was in the stuff that got cut away in the name of streamlining the basic design.

But Ethan's not a WotC developer, and he's wrong about 4e. All three of your points hold true for 4e players; it's regrettable that Morrus' players don't get that, but so it goes.

Quote from: Melan;374946Notice how this is a completely reasonably worded position

No, it fails at step 1, by comparing D&D to Monopoly and regarding the design concept of the "Jail" square on the board as inherently faulty design in either game.

Imagine, if you will, a Monopoly game where players (in addition to all the other stuff) occasionally draw action cards which lets them slide any player - competing player or themselves - 1-2 squares forward/backward on the board.

In the early stage of the game (few properties sold), you'd use that card to pull opponents into jail, because at that stage, missing a turn or several in jail would be a severe penalty for that player - he'll be missing opportunities to buy additional properties.

In the later stage of the game when all properties are sold, the incentive to use the card this way is gone. However, now you'd be well served to use that card on yourself to get yourself onto the safe Jail square, and watch the rest of the players burning cash while you take a nice time out without burning any.

In short, the jail square fills a design space in any game where giving oneself extra turns or depriving other players of their turns is important to the victory condition. Pulling competing players into such squares or zones is what 4E is all about.* Similar mechanisms to influence how many actions you and your opponents get per turn are prevalent in contemporary Eurogames like Dominion, and the only thing we're seeing is that people have difficulty comprehending that 4E is very much a Eurogame in that respect.

4E's conditions are basically ways for the DM and the party to screw each other with respect to how many opportunities they get to launch attack actions on each other per turn. It is, in other words, the only escape from letting the game grind into pure "I attack, roll damage, then you attack, roll damage" (short of the Intimidation roll to demoralize opponents), an opportunity for the game to really shine tactically.

And people like Morrus still complain. They don't want such respites from hp attrition. They want the "I attack, roll damage, then you attack, roll damage" with no interruption. That post on Enworld that re-designs all conditions into penalties on attack rolls and nothing else is the purest expression of this desire.

*Literally, but also more figuratively. For an extremely literal example look at the torturer encounter in KotS, inspired by a similar encounter in Hill Giants' Steading: the torturer is trying to pull a PC into the iron maiden, so that the PC suffers damage and is shut away for a turn during which he can't launch an attack action. Similar stuff in D&D 3.x: getting knocked prone was a pain in the ass because it ate up your move action just to stand up again and provoked attacks of opportunity from hostile bystanders if you tried that.

Windjammer: enlightening!

Quote from: Windjammer;374963Imagine, if you will, a Monopoly game where players (in addition to all the other stuff) occasionally draw action cards which lets them slide any player - competing player or themselves - 1-2 squares forward/backward on the board.

...

In the later stage of the game when all properties are sold, the incentive to use the card this way is gone. However, now you'd be well served to use that card on yourself to get yourself onto the safe Jail square, and watch the rest of the players burning cash while you take a nice time out without burning any.

You clearly didn't read up on all the errata for the sixth edition of Asswhole Monopoly.  After some careful breakdown of the numbers, it is statistically more beneficial to shift your opponent onto your own properties, but only after you have a hotel there.

Quote from: The Shaman;374908According to Morrus, being marked, restrained, or dazed are among the things which make playing the game "unfun" for his players.

My gut reaction is, "What a bunch of crybabies." I know that's impolitic, but there it is.

My gut reaction is that Morrus needs to read the rulebook because "most" monsters do not inflict status effect and most status effects do not cause you to miss a turn.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;374970My gut reaction is that Morrus needs to read the rulebook because "most" monsters do not inflict status effect and most status effects do not cause you to miss a turn.

Yeah, I read the whole EnWorld thread and I don't get where Morrus (or a couple of his supporters) are coming from.  I understand the "being taken out of combat all the time is lame" argument, I just don't see how it applies.

My 4e campaign has run over a year now with tons of combat against all kinds of different creatures.
* Stunned rarely ever comes up (I think it happened once, maybe twice the whole campaign).  And when it does, it stuns like one guy for maybe one round and its a power the monster can only use once.
* Immobilized is almost never a problem.  Even when it comes up, people are already in position and no longer need to move.
* Being knocked prone is barely an inconvenience.
* Slowed is not even worth tracking it has so little effect on the game.
* I have yet to even get to a creature with dominate or petrify (there's, what, a handful in all of MM1&2?)

I would understand Morrus' comments better if I knew what he was talking about.  How is it his group manages to encounter stun-powered creatures over and over again?

If anything, I think the vast majority of status effects are too weak on PCs - mostly because they usually only hit 1 PC out of the whole group and the status effect lasts maybe 2 rounds at most; though it almost never gets to that because of effects that cancel statuses, etc.

Maybe Morrus and his players haven't really read the rules that well?  Or are just really terrible players?

Quote from: Melan;374946c) you can't spend that time in a fun way (by kibbitzing, going to have a smoke, sitting back and listening, hatching up a plan etc.).

I guess that's the part that really gets me. It's as if the game's design is completely myopic regarding the actual game play, what really happens in the room when the game is played. The rules *are* the game, and the game is meant to be *the rules*. Everything else seems to be either filler, or incidental. That, to me, is really bad game design.

Quote from: The Shaman;374908I'm necroing this thread to add to the record the following post from another board, which for me illustrates what Melan was talking about way back when.According to Morrus, being marked, restrained, or dazed are among the things which make playing the game "unfun" for his players.

My gut reaction is, "What a bunch of crybabies." I know that's impolitic, but there it is.

I would SO not have fun -at all- with such a game.

Quote from: Benoist;374995I would SO not have fun -at all- with such a game.

Reply #500 bitches!

Raising the hit percentage in a quick combat game like 1st ed AD&D might make a little sense, as the rounds move pretty quickly.  Increasing them in 4e doesn't make a lot of sense, as the action of a player on their turn is quite detailed and takes up a much greater amount of time to decide and resolve.

Quote from: Melan;374965Windjammer: enlightening!

Agreed and seconded.

Quote from: StormBringer;374998#500 bitches!

Raising the hit percentage in a quick combat game like 1st ed AD&D might make a little sense, as the rounds move pretty quickly.  Increasing them in 4e doesn't make a lot of sense, as the action of a player on their turn is quite detailed and takes up a much greater amount of time to decide and resolve.

Well the reason I would not have fun is that it's all about "having stuff to do with the rules" all the time, and if one player ever gets off a turn, or -God forbid- gets paralized or something, then it's a huge badwrongfun issue that absolutely needs to be corrected for everyone to have fun again. How about mimicking your paralized stance at the table when it's your turn and making other players laugh with that? Or try to twitch from time to time? Or following what's going on for the others at the game table, for that matter?

It is fucking absurd! Like I said, it's so myopic as to what the game is, isn't, can and can't be that I don't know where to begin to be honest. It's a fucking board game for these guys. It's playing the rules, the rules are the game, the game is the rules. If the rules say your character does nothing, then you do nothing. The game's dead for you. WTF?! This is SO fucking stupid on so many levels. And THESE are veterans of gaming? Are you fucking kidding me?!??

Not to mention, there is less variety in outcomes at the game table if you nuke these conditions, which make fights all turn out the exact same way, with the same expectations (of more damage, save or suck or whatever)... it's so fucking boring! God's sakes! :eek:

Quote from: Benoist;374994The rules *are* the game, and the game is meant to be *the rules*.

That's a Forgism.

Quote from: One Horse Town;375002That's a Forgism.

That's bullshit, Dan, and you know it.

The point is, the rules should be addressing what would reasonably be considered to occur during a session (game), and not be working to address the activities around the game table.

Quote from: One Horse Town;375002That's a Forgism.

If by this you mean that this "The rules *are* the game, and the game is meant to be *the rules*" BS is a forgism, I agree!

Quote from: StormBringer;375005The point is, the rules should be addressing what would reasonably be considered to occur during a session (game), and not be working to address the activities around the game table.

What I'm getting at, personally, is that a set of rules that completely ignores how the game is actually played outside of its realm can only result in a faulty game design. That's why I use the word "myopic", in the sense that the design is so focused on the rules themselves and how they function in a vacuum, that it completely ignores the bigger picture, the game itself.