Quote from: Jackalope;225280Is the concept of delayed gratification completely foreign to you?

Not completely foreign. But I refuse to do it during my one night a week gaming session. We have challenges and fun at the same time. There's no need to wait to have the fun because the GM would rather have 0 fun and challenges now. Are you honestly saying you have no fun in the first X game sessions of a campaign, because you're delaying the fun until you get your work done?

Quote from: worrapol;224951Likewise a 4E player is not supposed to think, much less say, "my ranger makes a daring leap across the tavern table, grabs the chandelier, and stabs the villain" he is supposed to think and say "my striker oriented ranger makes a shift movement, employs a skill challenge to improve its attack function."

Then why does the DMG have a section about adjudicating situations that aren't within the rules? And more to the point, why is swinging on a chandelier part of the example it uses?

Certainly not every group who plays 4e will swing from chandeliers. Some might even prefer to stick completely to situations covered by the rules. But for those that enjoy that sort of thing, 4e tells the GM how to handle it.

Quote from: Jackalope;225280Is the concept of delayed gratification completely foreign to you?

I see no point in delaying gratification in my funtime.   My professional life provides all the tedious slog between work and reward.   When I sit down at the table, I want fun NOW.

However, if slow progression through escalating challenges excites someone, then there are certainly plenty of RPGs that cater to them.

About the 'working up to dragons' meme.

In 4e the lowliest dragon is a level 3 young white dragon. 3 hit dice.

In 3.5 D&D its the 3d12+3(22hp) Wyrmling white dragon. 3 hit dice.

In Red Box Moldvay Basic D&D the weakest Dragon with given stats is a 6 hitdice white dragon. The entry on dragons goes on to say that this is an averaged sized dragon of it's type and that young ones could go to about 3 hit dice smaller. So the young white dragon would be 3 hit dice. The red box even discusses what to do with low level (1-3) parties and Dragon encounters, mainly that they should be young dragons.

All of which work out to about the same kind of challenge for 1st level characters of each given game.

Dragons have not needed to be 'worked up to' since very near the beginning.

This argument is a straw man.

edit: Whats more, it seems to me, that people making this argument don't know D&D very well at all.

Quote from: Spinachcat;225268RPGA is the main feedback loop for D&D.

If true, no wonder the game just keeps getting worse and worse from the point of view of GMs (and their players) who want to create their own campaign world and play in it. If "convention play" is the major standard driving the designers, no wonder the system looks like it would work much better for one-shot competitive commercially-designed adventures rather than long-running non-competitive independent player-generated campaigns.

QuoteWhy does everyone need to work up to the dragon?  In fact, why should play time fun include any notion of "work" at all?

Why can't the the 4E game system include that as an option for those who enjoy it? For that matter, why couldn't 4E have included an alternative abstract combat system for those prefer short combats that don't suck up lots of limited game playing time? Etc.

The higher the edition number of D&D, the less scope there seems to be for different styles of play (without increasingly major rewrites to the increasing complex rules -- and hence the narrower and smaller the audience for the system.

Quote4e is not an evolution of earlier editions.  4e is a brand new fantasy game that simply uses the D&D title.   Once you treat 4e as if it was a new RPG called "Tombs & Terrors" without any relation to any other RPG you own, everything becomes easier to accept.

But not to get interested in. No matter what the name, 4E does not support anything like any of my preferred styles of play.  Calling it Tombs & Terrors would have been better as it would not have set up any false expectations, but it still would not interest me.

Quote from: RandallS;225296Why can't the the 4E game system include that as an option for those who enjoy it?

See here, you don't know what your talking about. 4E DOES provide dragons that have to be worked up to. This has been as true as my last post since at least near the very beginning.

Quote from: James McMurray;225287Not completely foreign. But I refuse to do it during my one night a week gaming session. We have challenges and fun at the same time. There's no need to wait to have the fun because the GM would rather have 0 fun and challenges now. Are you honestly saying you have no fun in the first X game sessions of a campaign, because you're delaying the fun until you get your work done?

Quote from: Spinachcat;225290I see no point in delaying gratification in my funtime.   My professional life provides all the tedious slog between work and reward.   When I sit down at the table, I want fun NOW.

Well, I think you're both presenting a false dilemma.  Delayed gratification does not mean no fun now.

It seems like in 4E you can walk out your door a 1st level character, band up with three other 1st level characters, travel to the cave of the most infamous dragon in the world, and fight it, knowing it will be a level appropriate challenge.  Fun now! right?  But then, what's so special about beating a  dragon then?  There's a different sense of fun, and of accomplishment, when you defeat a dragon that you can't get if dragons are beatable at any level.

Edit: And I mean real dragons, not wyrmlings and baby dragons.

And there was always the easy option for people who wanted to start out fighting dragons: start at a higher level!

QuoteHowever, if slow progression through escalating challenges excites someone, then there are certainly plenty of RPGs that cater to them.

Most famously, D&D.  Oh wait...

Quote from: Jackalope;225299It seems like in 4E you can walk out your door a 1st level character, band up with three other 1st level characters, travel to the cave of the most infamous dragon in the world, and fight it, knowing it will be a level appropriate challenge.

This is where you are dead wrong. Entirely ignorant of the truth.

The YOUNG white dragon is a 3rd level encounter. Not 1st.

Your very premise is ... mistaken.

Quote from: dar;225298See here, you don't know what your talking about. 4E DOES provide dragons that have to be worked up to. This has been as true as my last post since at least near the very beginning.

But it doesn't provide for player-characters that are fresh off the farm. First level characters are far more competent in 4E than those who like to start with a normal person and work them up to being a hero can stomach. First level characters in 4E are beginning (comic book) superheroes not just slightly better than normal people.

Quote from: dar;225301This is where you are dead wrong. Entirely ignorant of the truth.

The YOUNG white dragon is a 3rd level encounter. Not 1st.

Your very premise is ... mistaken.

Well I haven't played 4E.  From the way people talk about it -- the fans and designers, not Pundit -- I'd gathered that monsters were no longer tied to level.

People can't seem to decide if it's the same game or not.

Quote from: RandallS;225310But it doesn't provide for player-characters that are fresh off the farm. First level characters are far more competent in 4E than those who like to start with a normal person and work them up to being a hero can stomach. First level characters in 4E are beginning (comic book) superheroes not just slightly better than normal people.

I think you reach to far. But I agree with you here. I do like this about 4e, but I think a 'Neophyte' Tier would have been cool as an option.

I've been looking at this a couple of different ways. I think that a simple table for character levels -4 through 0 might do for such a tier. Characters would gain a portion of their level 1 features at every less than 1 level increment and start with next to none at level -4 (or -11?).

Its just an idea sloshing around, I dunno If I'd do anything about it.

Quote from: Jackalope;225312Well I haven't played 4E.  From the way people talk about it -- the fans and designers, not Pundit -- I'd gathered that monsters were no longer tied to level.

People can't seem to decide if it's the same game or not.

Please don't think I'm using the argument that you have to read and play and play in a campaign before you can make up your mind. I'm not.

I do think that correcting a factually incorrect statement is warranted.

The issue isn't about the challenge level of monsters; its about the fact that challenges in general in 4e don't have any relation to the concept of the world.  A party of 1st level characters walking into a dungeon will encounter 1st level slippery dungeon moss; and a party of 30th level characters walking into a dungeon will encounter 30th level slippery dungeon moss; for no reason that makes sense within the setting. The system is set up so that "balance" in the game actually destroys any sense of immersion in the world, for the alleged purpose of "creating fun", when in fact such a scheme destroys one of the major sources of REAL fun in an RPG, that of being able to connect to your character and to a world where that character exists and interacts with in coherent ways.  With 4e, all of that is reduced to so much "window-dressing".

RPGPundit

The issue isn't about the challenge level of monsters; its about the fact that challenges in general in 4e don't have any relation to the concept of the world.  A party of 1st level characters walking into a dungeon will encounter 1st level slippery dungeon moss; and a party of 30th level characters walking into a dungeon will encounter 30th level slippery dungeon moss; for no reason that makes sense within the setting. The system is set up so that "balance" in the game actually destroys any sense of immersion in the world, for the alleged purpose of "creating fun", when in fact such a scheme destroys one of the major sources of REAL fun in an RPG, that of being able to connect to your character and to a world where that character exists and interacts with in coherent ways.  With 4e, all of that is reduced to so much "window-dressing".

RPGPundit

Quote from: Spinachcat;225268RPGA is the main feedback loop for D&D.  Since RPGA happens at conventions where strangers sit down and play, there is none of the "interpretation acceptance" that happens in home games where we all have agreed upon, often unspoken house rules.  

Thus, the biggest concerns that go up the WotC ladder are not about immersion or storytelling, but how to make Rule X work with Exception Y to keep peace at the table and keep the game flowing instead of breaking down into yet another rules argument.

Having played the majority of my 3.x in Living Greyhawk, lurking for a few years on the various Yahoo groups, and a forum here and there, I suspect the same (as said as much here on TheRPGSite). However, I was wondering if Mr. Mearls had specific information he could share with respect to the actual design/feedback loop.

Unless, of course, you were part of the design team; in which case, please forgive my ignorance.

First about your 'tyranny of fun' argument,

Quote from: DMG page 104If every encounter gives the players a perfectly balanced challenge, the game can get stale. Once in a while, characters need an encounter that doesn't significantly tax their resources, or an encounter that makes them seriously scared for their characters' survival-or even makes them flee.

The paragraph about 'FUN' on the next page, taken in context with the above, clearly implies that fun can be making the characters flee in terror, or suffer a resounding beating or loss of some sort. You are clearly wrong about the game and the tyranny of fun.