Quote from: MelanFeel free to, it's not like I don't steal shamelessly.

Then consider it nicked.

@Melan: nifty and inspiring.

Quote from: WarthurOK, from my point of view: I'm an RC D&D/1st ed AD&D man, and 3.X isn't my thing. I think 3.X was hamstrung by two mutually exclusive needs:

- The need to be recognisably D&D to the old guard.
- The need to genuinely update the system to attract gamers who've drifted away to more modern systems, and to avoid accusations of simply putting out a new edition just to bilk the fans out of money (let's face it: AD&D2 was a rewrite of AD&D1 with a tiny number of tweaks, and that's incredibly lame).

For me, 3.X is a game trying to appeal to two different audiences and ending up leaving neither satisfied. There's no reason for characteristic scores to be written down in the 3-18 range since you only ever use the bonuses anyway, except in a very few cases - they've just retained that because having stats from 3 to 18 is the Old School way. Similarly with Vancian magic - 1st level wizards have always been totally useless, and that really should have been fixed with 3.0 - but wasn't. (See my "burned on the outside, raw in the middle" thread for more of my thoughts on that.)

Now, however, it looks like they've conceded that they've lost the hardcore old schoolers - C&C and OSRIC cater to them perfectly happily - and are tackling sacred cows like Vancian magic and whatnot in order to appeal to the new audience. As such, I'm optimistic about 4th edition - even though the game that currently calls itself "D&D" probably won't resemble older editions anymore, a) there's C&C out there to cater to the old guard, and b) I still have my 1st edition books too, so that's fine.

Bingo - cross posted elswhere...

Quote from: WotC_Mearls3e got a lot of things right, but anyone who has played it for a time knows that it gets things wrong. There are also legacy issues with the game that have persisted unquestioned for years. 4e is all about taking the things that work in D&D, keeping them in the game, and fixing everything else.

Looks like Warthur nailed this one right on the head..check out the bolded line.

This says, to me, there's lots of stuff they held on to but are now ready to dump.  The question will be: what goes, what stays...

Quote from: James J SkachThis says, to me, there's lots of stuff they held on to but are now ready to dump.  The question will be: what goes, what stays...

From quotes on RPGnet it appears spells are now be directly linked to character level. Thus a 20th level wizard can cast 20th level spells.

Also Fireball no longer does 1d6 damage per level.


Yup. It's off to the abbatoir with those sacred cows...

Quote from: DrewFrom quotes on RPGnet it appears spells are now be directly linked to character level. Thus a 20th level wizard can cast 20th level spells.

Also Fireball no longer does 1d6 damage per level.


Yup. It's off to the abbatoir with those sacred cows...

Well, for example, the Mearls sticky thread, he describes the cheers he got when he announced Vancian magic would be "(mostly) gone."

Now, it might be that a lot of people don't like Vancian magic.  That's fine.  But it's been in the game in every edition of D&D to one extent or another, correct? So now it sounds like it's going to be "(mostly) gone"

I don't know if the things they are going to leave behind are sacred cows or not - I didn't refer to them that way, nor did Mearls.  But his comments makes it clear that they are not unwilling to let go of things that have been a part of the game for a long time.  The question will be, as I said, what goes and what stays.  I'm certainly not making a judgement on whether the decisions they make in that regard are good or bad - that will have to wait until the rules show up in May.

Quote from: James J SkachI don't know if the things they are going to leave behind are sacred cows or not - I didn't refer to them that way, nor did Mearls.  But his comments makes it clear that they are not unwilling to let go of things that have been a part of the game for a long time.  The question will be, as I said, what goes and what stays.  I'm certainly not making a judgement on whether the decisions they make in that regard are good or bad - that will have to wait until the rules show up in May.

My response wasn't intended as snark. I think the "sacred cows" are largely a product of a small but vocal subsection of fandom. I also think many of them are ripe for excising. Mearls seemed pleasantly surprised by the reaction to the whole Vancian magic thing, which indicates certain concepts have nowhere near the importance some would claim.

Like you I'm reserving judgement until publication. But so far I'm still liking what I hear.

Quote from: AkrasiaSeriously, I like what is being said about 'streamlining' the system, making prep work less of a chore, making the game move more quickly (especially combat), weakening the dependency on magic items, and extending the 'sweet spot' by inflating the level range to 1-30.

I dislike the possibility that all classes will have ersatz spells, and the whole 'per encounter' approach to resource management.

Consider this a rare CS/Akrasia attitude conjunction.

Quote from: DrewAlso Fireball no longer does 1d6 damage per level.

Ugh.  That hit me like a stake through the heart.  "Magic-users of level 5+ can throw a fireball that does d6 damage per level" isn't quite as sacred as the concepts of levels and classes, but it hurts more than losing the half-orc.

I'll take a wild guess that most damage dealing spells will now do less, and a fixed amount, of damage. If you have the chance of throwing spells per encounter, then it follows that the ones that deal large amounts of damage will have it reduced. So, maybe Fireball will now do 5d6 damage full stop, but with the correct feats and having it as a per encounter spell, you'll have greater access to it.

Quote from: James J SkachWell, for example, the Mearls sticky thread, he describes the cheers he got when he announced Vancian magic would be "(mostly) gone."

Now, it might be that a lot of people don't like Vancian magic.  That's fine.  But it's been in the game in every edition of D&D to one extent or another, correct? So now it sounds like it's going to be "(mostly) gone".

Here's something I originally posted on ENWorld way back on 26. 07. 2006 in response to the thread about the Rust Monster’s destruction at the hands of Mike Mearls. It is inflammatory, and insulting to Wizards of the Coast designers. I am reposting it since this particular type of feedback loop in the design process leads me to believe I was right, and like Pundit, I like to dredge up age-old shit. You have been warned.

QuoteInteresting. This has been on my mind for a long time - that for the sake of balance, the game designers at Wizards are sacrificing imagination and the whimsical attitude that once permeated the game.



It is ironic that the same thing Gary Gygax was demonised for in the early 1980s is today held up by message board participants as the epitome of good design; even as infallible dogma. Gary could never have dreamed of succeeding in his attempt to make AD&D campaigns conform to a strict standard - and definitely not succeeding to this extent.

This begs the question: why does the Wizards of the Coast R&D team strive for so strict a balance and why does it intend to strip away out-of-box options from you? I call this phenomenon the tyranny of fun. A ludicrous name for a ludicrous concept, but there you have it. The WotC designers are not bad people. I am sure, for example, that the folks working there don’t hate the game or anything, maybe they don’t even kick puppies on their way home. Maybe they help old ladies across the street. They want you to have fun. Good, yes? Yes? No. The idea went wrong long ago and it shows no signs of getting better. When dealing with game philosophy, Wizards R&D doesn’t concentrate on thinking up stuff that makes playing fun anymore. That’s 1970s TSR thinking. Moreover, fun is inherently subjective and hard to quantify - all we can have is meaningless truisms like „the game is about killing critters and taking their stuff”, „getting loot and powering up”, „playing my character” or „sitting around and eating chips”. That’s not very helpful - it is all true, of course, but it doesn’t really tell you what to do to emphasise this in the game. So instead, they try to remove things from the game which are not fun. What isn’t fun? The things the fans complain about. But who complains? In short, the kind of people older rulebooks (and pardon my edition snobbery, but that’s just how I see it) warned us about. People whose characters got their swords destroyed by a rust monster and who threw a hissy fit over it. People whose characters died to a hold person spell and who wrote angry letters to Dragon magazine. People who didn’t have fun, whose entertainment was destroyed by this monster or that spell. Meet WotC’s focus groups, meet the people who are the target audience for future releases. The people 4e will be designed to accommodate.

Oh, I don’t have high hopes that these changes can be or will ever be „stopped”. ENWorld is ample proof of that. There comes a change like destroying the creative concept behind the rust monster, and there is a chorus of approving posts praising this decision as if it was the second coming of Our Lord Sliced Bread. Because, after all, D&D before „it was evolved” was a horribly designed, bad, bad game people didn’t have fun with and which didn’t sell, right? Right? According to WotC R&D (heh, R&D... I wonder if EGG ever had an „R&D” department), people who didn’t like D&D before are the people D&D should be designed for in the future, because that’s smart business. I am not making this up either.

There is, of course, the inevitable counter-reaction from reactionaries who don’t appreciate the changes and dare to suggest that hey, it was good the way it used to be, and there is no overwhelming need to „re-design it to be proper at last”. These rose-coloured glass-wearing fools even suggest that the design shouldn’t be used. Naive thinking. In fact, they will accomplish very little. The debate will flow back and forth for a while, and in the end, the sides will agree to meet halfway. And gee, you just conceded your position, dice-boy. You were suckered into accepting that maybe they are right. Maybe it really was bad design all along and it were your pleasant experiences that were false.

The final response is always going to be to remove any edge, any colour, to remove randomness and introduce standardised fair play into the game which started out as highly arbitrary and whimsical - in short, fantastic and open to creative interpretation.

This response is the symptom of a design culture which would never be capable of designing a game like Dungeons &Dragons.

And that is a pity.

Totally agree with your rant there Melan. It seems like WOTC and the Forgeites are starting from the same proposition: games must be saved from their worst players, who admittedly fuck things up for a lot of people. Therefore, the freedom for a group to work out its own playstyle is taken away by hardwiring in a very specific style of play.

It's the lowest common denominator effect: it gives Billy the 15-year old fanboy the ability to switch between groups and still get the same kind of game which hits his rOxXor buttons. Which isn't a bad thing, and it sells games. But not only does it not suit those with different tastes, increasingly it doesn't even allow for different tastes without considerable drift/homebrewing.

Problems of being market leader I guess. If you want to make big bucks selling drinks, you make Pepsi not single-malt. Guess I'll stick to my minority taste games as well.

The more people that get hooked on D&D in any form, the more people will developed refined tastes.
Either for their D&D gaming or even for different games.

Mass exposure to the method of Roleplaying is a GOOD thing.

Absolutely classic, Melan:

QuoteThis response is the symptom of a design culture which would never be capable of designing a game like Dungeons &Dragons.

While the folks who are designing 4E are undoubtedly sharp guys who understand how to put together an efficient system, I doubt they have a fraction of the creativity of the 1E crew. They're the euro-game designers of the RPG industry - it's all ultimately about numbers to them. Elegant, functional, efficient numbers.

However, I'm in the camp that feels 4E may be different enough from previous iterations of D&D that it will be a good game in its own right, instead of a form of D&D that I dislike. If the system is released alongside at least one solid adventure that isn't too insipid in its sensibilities, I'll be giving it a whirl.

Quote from: Haffrung...While the folks who are designing 4E are undoubtedly sharp guys who understand how to put together an efficient system, I doubt they have a fraction of the creativity of the 1E crew. They're the euro-game designers of the RPG industry - it's all ultimately about numbers to them. Elegant, functional, efficient numbers....

Can't dispute that, but you also can't dispute that the most popular boardgames that are actually being played, over and over and over again, are Euro games.  Why?  Because they're not just about the numbers, as you seem to think, but about the systems - the web of interactions between all of the factors in the game.

A game like Puerto Rico is fun, not because it accurately simulates managing the growth of a town and a plantation, but because the system is chock full of options and restraints that force you to think, and most of all, keep you thinking about the game long after the game is done.  "What if I did/do...?"

If the WoTC guys can nail that concept, they're going to have a massive success on their hands.

Quote from: HaffrungWhile the folks who are designing 4E are undoubtedly sharp guys who understand how to put together an efficient system, I doubt they have a fraction of the creativity of the 1E crew. They're the euro-game designers of the RPG industry - it's all ultimately about numbers to them. Elegant, functional, efficient numbers.

I don't know much about the rest of them, but Mike Mearls is a designer who's work I've respected and admired for quite a while now. Iron Heroes  was the game that drew me back to the d20 fold after an extended absence, and was (I felt) one of the strongest and most imaginative takes on what the game could potentially be. If I were forced to name a team who I'd trust to carry 4e off then he'd be one of them (the other being Steve Kenson, but you can't have it all).

QuoteHowever, I'm in the camp that feels 4E may be different enough from previous iterations of D&D that it will be a good game in its own right, instead of a form of D&D that I dislike.

That's is the impression I'm getting at the moment. Of course none of us will know until we see the finished product, but the 'first principles' approach strikes me as exactly the right way of going about it.