Quote from: Serious PaulOh I'm familiar with it. I'm certainly not a Yugi-Oh historian but I know all I need to know about it, same goes for Harry Potter. I am not afraid of the unfamiliar at all. In fact little that's been mentioned in this thread is unfamiliar to me. (I'd in fact welcome something completely outside the box, as I have yet to see anything really outside the box in a long time.)

A lot of it is still crap to me.

Of course it's mostly crap. That doesn't mean everything that comes from it is though. You grow flowers in shit after all. Worrying about the anime influence in the game isn't a wise thing to do though. You should be worried about whether they integrate potential influences from anime well or badly. For example, I'd rather they didn't have glowing auras and silly haircuts in all the art, but I do hope that they have the potential for fighters to deal tremendous damage and perform daring and exciting attacks.

However, that's not what people are doing in this thread. The very presence of anime, rather than the quality of its implementation, is what is being discussed as determining whether the end product is good or bad.

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I get your youth gone wild, rage against the machine persona Pseudo-but it is not substitute for real argumentation, which I think your posts severely lack. I realize your standard reply to someone calling you on a lack of evidence or real arguments is to call them names, so I'll expect a a few to be tossed my way-but seriously dude you're certainly intelligent enough, and I do respect your point of view, so I am hoping for more.

It's not my standard reply to start calling people names. I only do that when I get frustrated with them. I don't have any serious problems with you.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineWhat the Book of 9 Swords does is to let players play fighting characters who are considerably more diverse than the ordinary D&D fighter. Instead of just ending up as a magic knight, you can now play anime-style dextrous swordsmen who leap around and throw people through walls. You can play tough Greek heroes who gaffe their enemies with spears and who fling rocks hard enough to crack helmets. The capabilities of a Bo9S warrior are such that they aren't as dependent on magic items, or to the heavy-armour two-handed weapon archetype.

Which might have been really appealing to me when I was 16.  Now, I just hear things like this and think "Gee, that sounds like a metric fucktonne of rules I'd have to learn."
 
If only Wizards put that sort of attention into the non-combat aspects of the game :eek:
 
If they can present a whole bunch of interesting tactical options to make combat more varied without the rules becoming overwhelmingly complex and detailed... and if they can do something similar with non-combat elements of the game... then they've got my money.

Quote from: SettembriniBut I´m already pissed at zero strategic play, reactive tactics and encounters in which I´m doing just as good as the designers want me to do. (Savage Tide: Boooooh! Eyes of the Lich Queen: Booooh)

Can you explain the last part? I haven't played or read any of those adventure path things.

Quote from: James J SkachSee, Pseudo, you just don't get it, being a young turk who thinks he knows it all.

I have no problem with the Book of Nine Swords, at least not yet; not, at least, as a supplement.  The issue is that it is being cited as one of the main influences for 4th Edition.  That means these tools which can, as you say, model other kinds of heroes outside the "traditional" D&D approach, are now being used to shape the core rules.

My concern, totally unable to be proven or disproven until 4th Edition comes out, is that the implementation will make all attempts seem like modelling that which was once considered a supplemental approach and that whcih was "traditional" is left out. All I can go by is rumors - and those don't seem to promising. And that's fine, as I've said before.  It just mght be a big enough break from the past that it loses me, personally.  In fact, it might be a great business move on the part of WotC and I'm sure many will find it to be to their liking.

But you go ahead and call people all sorts of names.  Makes you seem neat to all your emo pals in the basement there at your moms.

:rolleyes:
 
Your basic point seems to be "I heard some scuttlebutt, and I don't like it!" Well, so what? Are you so afraid of any anime influence whatsoever that you aren't even going to wait to see the finished product before complaining about it? Because you're doing that right now.

Even if your "influences" are different, so what? Grow a little. Try something new. The two things I most want the games I run to be like are the tales of the conquistadors and Homeric epics, but that doesn't mean I only play in games that are like them. I am always willing to be surprised and find out that I really enjoy something that I thought I wouldn't (and I often do). To not be this way - to not be open - is to be parochial and narrow-minded. If you take those terms as insulting, then you should not act in the manner they describe.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWhich might have been really appealing to me when I was 16.  Now, I just hear things like this and think "Gee, that sounds like a metric fucktonne of rules I'd have to learn."

Oh no! Learning! Reading! Mild effort! The horrors! You might have to read part of a book to play a character! What are those fools thinking?!?

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's directed at Skach mostly, but you and Arcane, and maybe Pierce a little bit are part of my broadside. And of course I'm talking to you. Ignore people is juvenile.

As for your main point in that post, Dungeons and Dragons has had - since 2nd edition at least (I never played 1st so I won't comment on it, but I have played RC and it was true there as well) - a serious problem where Fighters and other combat oriented non-spellcasting classes are much more constrained in their combat options, damage output and "special" features than the spellcasting classes. Some people ignore this problem, but they're ignoring it, not resolving it. The closest D&D got to resolving this prior to the Book of Nine Swords was to give fighters magical weapons, armour and items. There was just no other way for them to compete at high levels with the wizards and priests.

This limit is a problem for many reasons, but the one I mentioned above is that it prevents players from drawing on many potentially interesting and cool ideas from fantastical and mythological traditions. You cannot be a Diomedes, Achilles, Hector or Achilles. To be as effective a fighter as possible, you had to load up on magic swords, swathe yourself in the heaviest magical armour possible, and content yourself with doing 20-some points of damage for the entirety of your career.

What the Book of 9 Swords does is to let players play fighting characters who are considerably more diverse than the ordinary D&D fighter. Instead of just ending up as a magic knight, you can now play anime-style dextrous swordsmen who leap around and throw people through walls. You can play tough Greek heroes who gaffe their enemies with spears and who fling rocks hard enough to crack helmets. The capabilities of a Bo9S warrior are such that they aren't as dependent on magic items, or to the heavy-armour two-handed weapon archetype.

That kind of choice is a good thing. And yes, while it does draw on some anime influences, using the Bo9S doesn't require you to emphasise the anime influence. The Greek heroes are well within the Western heroic fantasy tradition, and only with the Bo9S material can you finally have them in your game at an appropriate level of mechanical effectiveness without having to come up with awkward kludges.

Even if you don't want to be a Greek hero or an anime warrior, there are yet other character archetypes that are now much more easily realised. Opening these new options is a good thing - it gives players and DMs more choice.

This is pretty much how I see it. Whilst some of the styles share inspirational sources with Exalted the similarities between it and the Bo9C are more cosmetic than first appears. D&D has a long tradition of the mystically empowered warrior, from the Paladin and Ranger to any of the abundance of classes that have appeared over the 3.x run.

Where the Tome of Battle differs from previous attempts is that it grants the systemic tools to back these archetypes up in a meaningful way, rather sticking to relatively weak powers or borrowing abilities from other classes. The meleeist is now a force unto itself rather than a diluted mix of fighter and cleric, or fighter and druid.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineOh no! Learning! Reading! Mild effort! The horrors! You might have to read part of a book to play a character! What are those fools thinking?!?

I spend most of my day reading and learning.  I want to play games to escape from that shit.  Reading I can accept... but learning detailed and complex rules?  Fuck that!
 
The bigger concern I have is with book keeping.  I ultimately gave up on 3.5 after playing a high level wizard because the book keeping was a nightmare.  Sounds like 4e will be worse because there'll be a heap of book keeping with all classes, not just spell casters.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkNot the D&D that I remember.  But then, I can probably count on one hand the number of characters that made it out of Basic and into Expert.

That's fair enough, but the potential was undeniably there. Challenging gods and demon princes in gonzo multi-planar jaunts are as much a part of the D&D paradigm as grubbing around for a few coppers whilst fighting kobolds. Just look at Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits or the Immortals BECMI set. It's all there, and has been for decades.

Yeah, if I want gritty lowlife medieval stuff, I play Hârnmaster.

Quote from: DrewThat's fair enough, but the potential was undeniably there. Challenging gods and demon princes in gonzo multi-planar jaunts are as much a part of the D&D paradigm as grubbing around for a few coppers whilst fighting kobolds. Just look at Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits or the Immortals BECMI set. It's all there, and has been for decades.

True.  That's what was so wonderful about early versions of D&D.  You could play low-level gritty adventures and yet, there was the scope to one day get involved in truly epic stuff.  IMHO, one of the problems with 3e is that "epic" seems to almost be the default way to play the game.

I hope they change that.

Quote from: Thanatos02I'd pretty much be willing to put money on the idea that knights and dragons will be totally workable in 4th. It's a big demographic.

Or else this 4e key visual wouldn't make any sense, wouldn't it?

Quote from: James J SkachActually, this leads down the line of them trying to appeal to the "cinematic" feel, where cinematic equals asin influences.  People have talked about it here and elsewhere that Anime is the big influence - if for no other reason then this is what the upcoming and just arrived gamer cut their teeth on (Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, whatever).

To be fair, with the three different grades of adventure (Heroic for 1st to 10th level, Paragon for 11th to 20th, Epic for 21st to 30th), it sounds like D&D 4e can handle "low fantasy" just fine - just play on the Heroic scale and don't go beyond 10th level.

Conversely, those who do want to go all Exalted on a dragon's ass can just start at 21st level.

Quote from: SettembriniWhat´s really getting on my nerves is the "monster roles". It might be the last small step moving the experience from "experiential" to ...I dunno, nothing I care for in any case.

I don´t like fighting mooks. Mooks destroy my gaming fun.

Either they are what they are because they are what they are, or I´m out.

Damn, this is the third person I've seen people on here make this mistake.

GUYS, THE ARTICLE THE "MOOKS AND MASTERMINDS" QUOTE WAS CULLED FROM WAS ABOUT MONSTER MANUAL V, NOT 4E.

Now, we know that Wizards have a policy of using 3.X supplements to test ideas for 4E, so the Mooks/Masterminds stuff might make it in. Conversely, it might not. But talking as if they'll definitely make the cut is hell of premature.

I got great love for Book of 9 Swords.  My barbarian PC that added Warblade levels as soon as the class was legal in the campaign was totally effin' sweet.  And there was nothing anime about my guy.  He was, for all intents and purposes, a Conan clone.

That being said, I worry about any suggestion that D&D is going towards every class using heavy tactical resource management.

Quote from: Thanatos02EDIT: I wanna clairify a bit. It's not because I hate Tolkien, because I absolutely love his works. But I'm increasingly doubtful that D&D was ever really the game to model that, mostly because it doesn't very well. Even in a setting were magic is fairly rare, a game with fairly reliable and frequent divine healing and PC wizards doesn't seem to be a game that fits the bill. A mod could do it, but the game out of box needs work.

Hell yes. D&D was always a mashup of Moorcock, Leiber, and Howard, with perhaps a little bit of Tolkein here and there. (Halflings, balrogs, and treants - that's pretty much it.)