Quote from: jibbajibba;360794That sounds terribly like a Wargame when one reads it cold. Not saying that is a bad or good thing but it certainly a Quantum Leap from this to 'I like the fact that I can now play a Lizardman' or 'I like the fact that you could devise a Priestly class that better reflected the God they were supposed to worship rather than just being a second class fighter than could heal'.

You must not play a lot of MMOGs.  The bottom half of what Malleus said is the kind of conversation that goes on every day on every MMOG forum in the world.

Quote from: jibbajibba;360828I think one of my problems with it all is that the rules have been changed from a mechanical perspective to balance the game but there hasn't been enough of a 'fluff' based explanation of it.

So I like the idea of Hit point recovering quickly. If they truely do represent luck and endurance and skill as turning that deadly blow into a scratch then they should recover quickly but for that to'work' there has to be an effect of damage that you didn't dodge in time.

The same is true of magic. in the old versions there was reference to the fact that spells were memorised but the effect of casting the spell released energies that erased it. So that was a pretty daft bit of fluff but one that holds up well in Vance and in the Amber books where a hung spell is realeased in much the same way. Likewise a Spell point system where spell of different levels cost varying points due to their power makes sense. It provides a nice in game explanation of how the thing works. They seems to have dropped all that for the purposes of game balance so now there is no attempt to explain in game effects other than to say these are the rules.

Take daily and per encounter powers. If a Fighter uses a special move that move is not deemed magical but he can't use the same move again until tomorrow? There is no logic to this in game other than to say that is the rule.

From a game balance perspective great but from a role-play immersive perspective it's a bit crap.

I think this outweighs most of the good stuff (the varying Power sources being a good thing).

This is the core behind Pundit's rants that 4e is a Forgite's pure-gamist-fantasy-made-flesh.  Cut out the swine-flu and you're left with a salient point - 4e is all about the mechanical metagame.  You don't care why a rule is there, because the only reason it's there is to make a tactical game.  It has nothing to do with rules, classes, or spells flowing logically from a cosmology or setting.  It just is.

If this is what you think I mean:

QuoteHaving to discern what Gygax et al "really meant" decades after the fact just reinforces that they should have written more clearly in the first place. I shouldn't have to have say a degree in Obscure Fantasy Literature Analysis just to play a game as the authors intended.

When I suggest you think of creative ways to use a "low power" character and quit trying to be motherfucking Gandalf the White at 1st level, then yeah, I can definitely understand why you have reading comprehension problems.  

Seriously, I love how every time I or anyone else suggests that characters start off slow, think outside the box, and look back in n sessions from atop the peak they've climbed there's this chorus of BAAAAAAAWWWWWWW GYGAX KICKED ME IN THE NUTS AND TOOK MY LUNCH MONEY BAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW.  Listen, I will openly admit to not being the sharpest pineapple in the basket sometimes, but I got it when I played it the first few times, and I got it again when I picked it back up in '99.  I've introduced AD&D to people whose sole experience with RPGs prior to was video games, and they got it.  My seven year old gets it.  Why can't you?  Oh, wait, I'm sorry, the old way is broken, right.  :roll:

So, kiddies, since AD&D worked for millions of people (and still does for more than just my gaming group), maybe it's you who need to get over it.

Quote from: IMLegend;3608701. make sure I'm proficient with darts.

In OD&D there were no weapon proficiencies. All characters were proficient with all weapons. In pre-supplement OD&D, all weapons even did the same 1d6 damage.

Quote2. make sure I have a high enough dexterity to really utilize any thrown object.

Dexterity had no real effects on throwing objects or weapons in OD&D. Attribute scores had very little effect on play unless the Greyhawk rules were used, even there they had less effect on play than in later editions.

Quote3. purchase darts and flasks of oil over and above all the usual equipment and spell components for a wizard.

No spell components in OD&D. So you would have plenty of money to buy darts and oil -- especially as you did not need to spend any on armor.

Quote4. hire and pay an underling NPC specifically to run around and light my little puddles on fire and hold my hand.

Hirelings were ALWAYS a good idea in OD&D. People to carry touches and treasure -- and to find traps/help fight monsters.

Quote from: RandallS;360893a bunch of good stuff

+1  Yep, somebody else who gets it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;360888You must not play a lot of MMOGs.  The bottom half of what Malleus said is the kind of conversation that goes on every day on every MMOG forum in the world.

I'm not exactly the kind of person who's been shy of criticizing 4E, but the unabating eagerness to point out 4E's proximity to MMOs strikes me as wrongheaded. What Malleus' posting describes is indicative of something else.

I remember an email exchange I had in early 2008 with Mearls where I pointed out to him that nothing of the preview material for 4E had encouraged me to think that the upcoming edition will fix 3.5's greatest flaw as a game. That flaw, in my estimate, is that the actual game takes place before the players meet at the table. The actual game is when they build their characters, using their splats at home. By the time the session starts and battle commences, all the important choices to be made in the game system have been made already. The amount of deliberation you put into building your character as opposed to the amount of careful deliberation needed in play was extremely disproportionate. And that meant that 3.5, as a game to be played at the table, was fundamentally flawed. It's like having two chess champions meet who have memorized the game they will play in advance. It's a tedious, pointless exercise.

In reply, Mearls said that 4E designers really saw that flaw early on and wanted 4E to be a different game. The idea was that the amount you'd spend on fine tuning your PC would be much less, due to (a) a lesser amount of crunch to choose from when building your PC and (b) the higher amount of deliberation needed when playing him - in particular, deliberation of which power to use when and in light of what the other guys at the table did.

Having played 4E quite a bit, I must say it's a resounding success in that area. Area (b) is much more developed in its design than it ever was in 3.5. It's a fucking amazing design success at delivering a team game with heat of the moment quick thinking. I like that. I like that a lot. I also like to use a sandglass timer to bring on the heat even more.

But here comes the cost you pay for this move. All the bull shit lingo that tormented the char-op forums in the fora of yesterday have moved to the limelight of table talk. That's because all the decision making that occupied the optimizers when building their characters has now moved to the area of playing them.

Quote from: Casey777;360859As someone who really likes Vance and even more obscure authors, I'll be the first to admit that he's not highly read and never has been, even with the free advertising from AD&D. While he provided Gygax with a germ of an idea to balance his game Cugel et al aren't what most people think of when they picture a wizard.

Hmmmmm.  From Wikipedia:  Among Jack Vance's his awards are: Hugo Awards, in 1963 for The Dragon Masters and in 1967 for The Last Castle; a Nebula Award in 1966, also for The Last Castle; the Jupiter Award in 1975; the World Fantasy Award in 1984 for life achievement and in 1990 for Lyonesse: Madouc; an Edgar (the mystery equivalent of the Nebula) for the best first mystery novel in 1961 for The Man in the Cage; in 1992, he was Guest of Honor at the WorldCon in Orlando, Florida; and in 1997 he was named a SFWA Grand Master.

You don't win awards like that without your books being pretty widely read.

Quote from: Thanlis;360872You, too, are an unimaginative idiot.

Seriously. Any time you find yourself critiquing any RPG by making up a dialogue between two people who could not play their way out of a paper bag, you have failed. You are proving yourself incapable of intelligent conversation. Don't be that person.

The example was one of two things: either a player who didn't bother to read the rules, or a player who read the rules but wanted to be a douche to the DM. "Ha ha, look at me, I'm going to point out that I can't use my encounter attack twice in one encounter instead of trying to work with the DM. My critique of the system is more important than working with the rest of the table to enhance immersion. My penis is better than you."

I have so little tolerance for that shit I can't even begin to tell you.

btw, if anyone's interested in actually fucking talking about the question -- which I think is a really interesting one, I just don't buy it as this crippling "ha ha I gotcha!" flaw -- I'm hearing Martial Power 2 talks about it. I don't know if it's any good or not. I mentioned earlier in the thread that the fluff in Primal Power was good; this sort of attempt to conceptualize powers is what I was thinking of. Hopefully MP2 is also good.

What the fuck are you on about - seriously?

The fake conversation stems back to the argument of mechanics for the sake of mechanics with no fluff surrounding them.  Magic, in previous editions was based on 'story logic' of spells working like one shot programs that you stored in ram (cuz computer analogy works well).  In this new system they've created a whole slew of mechanical tools to combat balance the classes but built no story logic into it.  Why can the fighter do this attack every round, but not this one..... that's what the fake conversation is eluding to you douche.  

There name calling it makes everything sound more authentic.

Seriously (there now this should sound important) if 4e is first and foremost a mechanical system then the rest doesn't matter the rules are there because they are rules.  But then again that's pretty much the way board games work.  No one questions why the Pawn can only move 1 sometimes 2 spaces and attack diagonally - but oh that Rook, such a show off.

However if the rules are there because they are the mechanical interface to give us the players some guidelines as to why the story world works the way it does then there should be some story logic to decide why this power can be used all the time and this one once a day.

Quote from: Windjammer;360895That's because all the decision making that occupied the optimizers when building their characters has now moved to the area of playing them.

Maybe, but in the end, there isn't really less of an importance on build, it's just that a lot of the build is built-in through guaranteed magic items, magic items you make yourself, etc...  They focused more on the play at the table which is a good thing, and to do that, they made it hard for you to gimp your build.  Instead of emphasizing tactical MMOG character building, they are emphasizing tactical MMOG power use.  Which is a very good change, but don't try to tell me the core game hasn't incorporated even more from MMOGs then the previous version.  Rationalize variable-timed power use, healing surges etc... however you want, they're still MMOG mechanics brought to paper, not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Quote from: kryyst;360904Magic, in previous editions was based on 'story logic' of spells working like one shot programs that you stored in ram (cuz computer analogy works well).

Not quite. Vancian magic was invented by Gygax purely for meta game reasons: so the wizard could do more powerful stuff than the fighting man, so he should be able to do it less often. Rationalizating this by pointing to pulp fiction (Vance) came as an afterthought, sort of cover up job. You can hear this from the horse's mouth if you watch the interview with GG as part of the extras on the DVD for the second D&D movie. (Clever, ey? I reference a source that is too tasteless for most people to check.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;360910but don't try to tell me the core game hasn't incorporated even more from MMOGs than the previous version.

I wouldn't. I'm just seeing the rationale for these things coming from certain experiences the designers (and some players) had with D&D 3.5, and not from MMOs. Healing surges is one of them (mechanically they are the same thing as wands of cure light wounds, except that the game cuts out the interim step of the PCs purchasing said gear). Making monsters function different when 'bloodied' is another. Even monster roles and party roles.

I think these things strike people as MMO'isms because of the naming conventions used. Just wanted to point out that the underlying design doesn't seem to be motivated by MMOs. Not in my estimate, anway. Which is why the major culprit for me isn't the design, but the bullshit MMO talk at the table that ensues.

Quote from: kryyst;360904Seriously (there now this should sound important) if 4e is first and foremost a mechanical system then the rest doesn't matter the rules are there because they are rules.  But then again that's pretty much the way board games work.  No one questions why the Pawn can only move 1 sometimes 2 spaces and attack diagonally - but oh that Rook, such a show off.

However if the rules are there because they are the mechanical interface to give us the players some guidelines as to why the story world works the way it does then there should be some story logic to decide why this power can be used all the time and this one once a day.

That's because 4E D&D isn't an Immersive Role-Playing Game (IRPG), but a Tactical Role-Playing Game (TRPG).  The post where I talk about these terms is here.

Quote from: Windjammer;360916Not quite. Vancian magic was invented by Gygax purely for meta game reasons: so the wizard could do more powerful stuff than the fighting man, so he should be able to do it less often. Rationalizating this by pointing to pulp fiction (Vance) came as an afterthought, sort of cover up job. You can hear this from the horse's mouth if you watch the interview with GG as part of the extras on the DVD for the second D&D movie. (Clever, ey? I reference a source that is too tasteless for most people to check.)

First - no fair on the reference, that's cheating.

Secondly regardless of why it came into being chicken/egg the explanation made it into the early books and became part of the setting.  I'm not surprised that it was a mechanical balance, but they backed it up with story.  This hasn't been done in 4e, though 4e is hardly alone in that regard.  It just happens to have the distinction of being a significantly different version of D&D in most regards from every previous edition.

Quote from: CRKrueger;360917That's because 4E D&D isn't an Immersive Role-Playing Game (IRPG), but a Tactical Role-Playing Game (TRPG).  The post where I talk about these terms is here.

Not that I'm trying to be purposely argumentative.  But fuck that.  It's either a Role Playing game or it's not.  I mean this sudo category crap is just distinction for the point of distinction.  If I start making up a story for why my Pawn is attacking your Knight, that doesn't mean I'm role playing - that just means I'm a nut job.

4e is an RPG, though you can certainly scrape out all that RPG stuff and play it as a board game ala Descent.   But then you aren't playing all of 4e in it's entirety.  If you want to judge only a portion of 4e, that's fine but then we should be defining those portions from the start.

Again - not really purposely picking on you, despite my comment I actually agree with with what you are suggesting for the most part in that post.

Quote from: CRKrueger;360917That's because 4E D&D isn't an Immersive Role-Playing Game (IRPG), but a Tactical Role-Playing Game (TRPG).  The post where I talk about these terms is here.

I think that is a very nice distinction. to paraphrase Marx, 'From each according to his motivation to each according to mechanical game balance.'

Magic in pre 4e D&D sprang as much from the sympathetic magic from L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's "Harold Shea" series as from Vance.