Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;387726"You are heroes who go on quests, building up your strength and remaking the world until eventually you can challenge the gods themselves."

YMMV.

I'd say Hercules would be the paradigm for a 4e PC.

It's cool. Any feedback is welcome at this point.

I understand the quests and building up strength thingies (i.e. levelling and all that goes with it, I assume). 4e contains rules to challenge the gods themselves? In the core books? Is that really a central theme of the game?

Quote from: LordVreeg;387723We talked about that once.  Less heroic and more mythic, was where we seemed to end.  
Not Superman, but Gilgamesh?  More Väinämöinen?  (trying to find mythos that are not dominated by magical items...)

Gilgamesh, the heroes of the Iliad, Hercules, and the heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mythic is a good way to describe it.

TBH, other than some variants of d20, I've never thought D&D was particularly good at low fantasy, so I don't see 4e's emphasis on the mythic as a radical break from 3.x and 2e's emphasis on the heroic.

Quote from: AM

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreeg1) I don't think so. We've spoken of this before, thee and I. I still see in-game logic as critical for immersion. The players need to be able to think as their characters, at some level, to immerse at any level.
Metagaming is the opposite. It is thinking of the rules, thinking like the player.

Well, I think players require less handholding than that. I know that there's a strong tendency to think "oh WE roleplay, but nobody else does..not like us" (and you might even believe that its having rules that allows for this to happen.
But the truth is, you don't know if the first condition is even true, and the second one is entirely a matter of opinion.

No.  It's not about handholding.  It is simply that some rules are written to certain things better than others.  Very purely and simply.  In-game logic helps immersion, and immersion is the opposite of metagaming.

Quote from: AM

Quote from: LVWhen the players capture the mess area and kitchen for the elite Orc chieftant, they are going to find Evercoal and my roasting pan. Not the Gauntlets the player wished for.
In my opinion, at least.  

Why would you think it would be otherwise in 4E D&D?

Because you have wishlists.  That was what we were talking about, remember?  
 A game that has them will give PCs what they want in a game as a priority, regardless of the context.  My example above is context being given priority.  
Unless you have a chef class, in which case, you might have me.

Quote from: LordVreeg;387730No.  It's not about handholding.  It is simply that some rules are written to certain things better than others.  Very purely and simply.  In-game logic helps immersion, and immersion is the opposite of metagaming.

I disagree.

QuoteBecause you have wishlists.  That was what we were talking about, remember?  
 A game that has them will give PCs what they want in a game as a priority, regardless of the context.  My example above is context being given priority.  
Unless you have a chef class, in which case, you might have me.

It's still up to the Dm to determine what treasure (if any) is present in any encounter. You can also ignore the player's list entirely. It's nothing more than a player saying "yeah, I eventually want to get that fochluan bandore for my bard.. " and the Dm considering whether or not there could be an adventure with a fochluan bandore in it.

Quote from: Benoist;387728It's cool. Any feedback is welcome at this point.

I understand the quests and building up strength thingies (i.e. levelling and all that goes with it, I assume). 4e contains rules to challenge the gods themselves? In the core books? Is that really a central theme of the game?

Well, massive earth-threatening evils a la Sauron etc.. Orcus, Demogorgon & Vecna are written up as monsters for it that top-level PCs are meant to fight. It's epic-tier stuff, obviously, but you rise from saving the town from goblins to the kingdom from liches to the world from Orcus. The idea is a constant escalation of the conflict's stakes and scope as PCs rise in power. I do find, just empirically, that I'm willing to throw grander and more outright magical threats at PCs.

So, for example, in the heroic-tier Dawnlands game I ran, the PCs had to save the town of Stoneshore from a horde of undead elves a leper-shaman had summoned by in turn summoning a giant centipede spirit from the realm of dreams to eat the undead using an elaborate ritual. The story ended with them battling this eladrin warlock who had orchestrated the whole thing so his demonic master could feed off the death and emerge into the world.

OTOH, the 3.x conquistador game I ran at about the same level range with the same players involved the PCs exploring a lost Aztec-style city whose inhabitants had degenerated into barbarian cannibal elves and which was now run by a necromancer. They fought skeletons, and some of the elves, and some were-rats and a giant stone statue of a spider temporarily animated. It felt considerably lower in scope and scale - the necromancer wasn't planning to take over the world or anything - and the PCs were never really going to go beyond being somewhat stronger and tougher versions of what they were already.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;387709Having played the game using a char who had extremely few magical items, none of which were the appropriate level for him, it's not too bad. Getting CA takes care of a lot of the difference at anything below paragon, so you only miss maybe 10% more often at anything paragon and lower.

This was the same in 3.x, except for enemies with DR/magic.

The whole idea of "encounter balance" in 3.x and 4e is a bugaboo. Outside of a few test adventures and the occasional sport encounter, my group almost never "balanced" encounters and things worked just fine.

Which is fine.  I've never messed much with CR or balanced encounters.  I never really found it that much of a chore balancing combat in older editions without these mechanical crutches.  I just disagree with the prior assertion that magical items aren't an important part of the game;  they are factored into the mathmatics of the engine.  That's part of the reason the "Itemless" option appeared in DMG2; you can more easily emulate the Iron Heroes "its not the sword, but the arm that wields it" trope.

Quote from: StormBringer;387699Even for a tournament game, that is a shitty magic item, even moreso the delivery.

Well, I'll tell you this - with the Powers that every class has (in essence, "spells") I don't think magic items are anywhere near as important anymore. I sure haven't really missed them much at all, so far - I've looked over a couple of the cards and shrugged them off, mostly - just kept the pick since my character was using a pick (and that's why it WAS a pick). Even healing potions are "meh" now because of surges.

Another interesting tidbit from some lunchtime reading - in the quests section of the DMG (where it talks about how to structure them for adventures) it actually says you should let players come up with their OWN quests, based on their characters - "and remember, say yes as often as possible!"

Yes, it included the exclaimation point.

O.o

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;387729Gilgamesh, the heroes of the Iliad, Hercules, and the heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mythic is a good way to describe it.

TBH, other than some variants of d20, I've never thought D&D was particularly good at low fantasy, so I don't see 4e's emphasis on the mythic as a radical break from 3.x and 2e's emphasis on the heroic.

Good, I'm glad I am getting it.

And I see each incarnation of D&D less able to model what i play, very, very mortal games with very slow growth.  I just see 4e as worse at it than the games I left behind.  I did not consider 0/AD&D good with it, as I left, partially because characters were getting as many HP as a warhorse within 5-6 levels of play.

Quote from: LordVreeg;387730In-game logic helps immersion, and immersion is the opposite of metagaming.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;387732I disagree.

The explains a whole helluva lot.  If you think Immersion isn't decreased in direct proportion to the amount of Metagaming then of course you love 4e and aren't bothered by dissociative mechanics.  

What it comes to is, and I realize this is going to sound horribly elitist, you don't really know what Immersion is, because you haven't experienced it to the same degree some of us have, you're just not wired that way.  Which is fine, but it makes it really pointless discussing things like Immersion with you.

Quote from: Werekoala;387747Another interesting tidbit from some lunchtime reading - in the quests section of the DMG (where it talks about how to structure them for adventures) it actually says you should let players come up with their OWN quests, based on their characters - "and remember, say yes as often as possible!"

Yes, it included the exclaimation point.

O.o

I like the idea of letting the players come up with quests; I thought it was pretty analagous to dropping hooks into their character background, something I try and get my players to do anyhow.

Hm. A GURPS background advantage or patron is a hook if the GM wants to use it. Letting the players come up with their own quests may be a hook too, but it hooks the DM, not the player, IMO.

Clarification - to me a "quest" is mandatory (almost like a geas or something) rather than just an interesting background quirk - that might just be my personal interpretation.

Quote from: LordVreeg;387749Good, I'm glad I am getting it.

And I se each incarnation of D&D less able to model what i play, very, very mortal games with very slow growth.  I just see 4e as worse at it than the games I left behind.

We tend to play low fantasy, gritty games, so we've moved onto other systems, though I don't mind going back and playing a bit of 4e now and then. Right now, I'm working on an RQ2 supp (Moragne) and a D&D 3.x / Iron Heroes complete rebuild with my buddy for a swords-and-sorcery style game we'll probably start later this year once nWoD wraps up.

I don't have any problem with people selecting different fantasy game systems to achieve different tones or tell different kinds of stories. I do it all the time.

Quote from: Werekoala;387747Another interesting tidbit from some lunchtime reading - in the quests section of the DMG (where it talks about how to structure them for adventures) it actually says you should let players come up with their OWN quests, based on their characters - "and remember, say yes as often as possible!"

Yes, it included the exclaimation point.

O.o

Yikes.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;387756We tend to play low fantasy, gritty games, so we've moved onto other systems, though I don't mind going back and playing a bit of 4e now and then. Right now, I'm working on an RQ2 supp (Moragne) and a D&D 3.x / Iron Heroes complete rebuild with my buddy for a swords-and-sorcery style game we'll probably start later this year once nWoD wraps up.

I don't have any problem with people selecting different fantasy game systems to achieve different tones or tell different kinds of stories. I do it all the time.

Vreeg's first Rule of Setting Design,
"Make sure the ruleset you are using matches the setting and game you want to play, because the setting and game WILL eventually match the system."

Yes.
I play very gritty, very social-heavy games, with a growth curve built for very long term campaigns/games.  Not many games do that well.  No finger pointing.  Just fact.

BTW, I've really liked the Moragne stuff I've seen.

Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;387751I like the idea of letting the players come up with quests; I thought it was pretty analagous to dropping hooks into their character background, something I try and get my players to do anyhow.

Or just having characters have goals they pursue. I'm not a big one for sitting back and letting the DM's wave of plot wash me along, nor are some of the other guys in my group.