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Nancy_Noxious posted:Is there any professional RPG designer who currently doesn't hate 4e?
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Jul 31, 2014 14:48
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It's... frustrating — instead of going forward, d20 designers got grog-scared and ran away back to the year 2000.
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Daetrin posted:I mean, consider Mearls. Technically, he's on the design team for one of the most "professional" RPG systems to exist, but I'm not sure I'd consider his general behavior professional. Speaking of which: http://failforward.co.uk/post/93348768153/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-endorsing-the-darkest-parts
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Jul 31, 2014 15:12
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I'm always surprised by how wizard-crazy so many D&D designers seem to be. Like, okay, you want something that goes a bit back more toward tradition, that's not a bad thing on it's own, even as a 4e fan, but like, you could still try to balance wizards, or make complicated martial stuff while having Vancian magic and stuff.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:13
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That's true. If I recall correctly, when the Commander class was being designed (it was still called "Battle Captain" at the time), Heinsoo mentioned that Tweet complained that the class design was "more miniatures game than RPG". Sorry for the 13th Age derail — back to 5e. What really bothers me is that a lot of accumulated knowledge was simply banished from D&D's design space. gently caress, 4e was able to turn class into a style choice — character creation ceased to be a hidden mini-game that you lose by writing "fighter" instead of "wizard" on your character sheet. 4e was honest — the majority of D&D's system, through all the editions, was devoted to combat, so 4e made combat itself interesting. But no, D&D must pretend it's a deep game about *~story*~, and anything that makes combat or martial classes fun must be burned (presumably so the healing can begin).
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Jul 31, 2014 15:13
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After how the fanbase reacted to 4e, D&D seems pretty set on forever cannibalising it's own history repeatedly, while refusing to move on to anything new. I hadn't really followed anything related to 5e before the past few weeks, and I ended up buying the new starter box on a whim. I knew enough to expect some steps backwards, but not to the extent it has gone running back to the 2000s. I liked 4e quite a bit, especially thanks to the several quality of life improvements it had. Having a starter box like this that doesn't provide even basic cardboard tokens or maps feels like a huge step back, (even 3e did that) and it feels absolutely antiquated to have enemy statblocks that want me to look up spells from the players rulebook + do the required math on the fly. Reducing gm preptime was one of the features of 4e that I loved, and I can't believe they're taking steps back from such basic poo poo. On a quick glance the rules seem OK, since I also like 3e for some things. But it's looks close to it, that I don't understand why I'd spend tens or hundreds of dollars on a partially streamlined 3e clone. That combined with my own group mostly moving on to other games, (thanks to the 2 year dry spell with nothing new) and all this Pundit/Zak business pretty much makes this the first edition in decades that I have no intention to spend money on.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:38
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A Catastrophe posted:His partner on the project is an old school dev. The comments in the book make clear that Jonathan Tweet got his way a bunch of the time. It was honestly shocking to me that the designer/co-designer of genuinely innovative and ground-breaking games like Over the Edge and Ars Magica could be so completely regressive and hidebound when it came to D&D specifically (though for that matter, I find it hard to believe the BIOTRUTHS poo poo on his blog could come from a guy who wrote one word of OTE either). Although I guess Tweet did also work on 3e core and I suppose has had few second thoughts about how it turned out. I think it's just time to admit a seeming majority of the D&D fanbase is way too emotionally invested in the game and whatever it represents to them to allow it to be criticized and become better. poo poo, the most important development in D&D fandom since 2008 is the OSR, a movement that literally believes no significant improvements have been made to the game since 1974. If D&D was just one game among many I wouldn't care but it's drat near heartbreaking that the single biggest brand and entry point into the hobby is so deeply committed to being regressive. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 16:18
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"How to fanbase reacted to D&D 4E" you mean by buying a ton of it, playing it a lot, and making the online offerings into a big revenue stream? 4E was a financial success. 5E might also be a financial success. But I am not interested in playing a different version of 3E.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:22
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Littlefinger posted:Speaking of which: http://failforward.co.uk/post/93348768153/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-endorsing-the-darkest-parts Christ. If Mearls hates warlords, and Mearls hates goons, does that mean goons are Warlords? BRB, going to shout granny back to life.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:28
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Littlefinger posted:Speaking of which: http://failforward.co.uk/post/93348768153/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-endorsing-the-darkest-parts this article is pretty interesting, if only for doing a decent job of showing how the two in question are pretty huge assholes. I have pretty much zero experience with the RPG internet culture so it's kinda like reading some fiction story (not that I doubt its veracity per se, but rather in the ridiculous quality of some of the content) However the author also makes some pretty tenuous leaps like linking politics to gaming preferences.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:28
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Laphroaig posted:"How to fanbase reacted to D&D 4E" you mean by buying a ton of it, playing it a lot, and making the online offerings into a big revenue stream? Sure, it might have sold, but it also split the fanbase bad enough that something like Pathfinder could exist -and- outlive 4e. Regardless of sales, this clearly scared the D&D folk something fierce.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:32
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Parkreiner posted:It was honestly shocking to me that the designer/co-designer of genuinely innovative and ground-breaking games like Over the Edge and Ars Magica could be so completely regressive and hidebound when it came to D&D specifically (though for that matter, I find it hard to believe the BIOTRUTHS poo poo on his blog could come from a guy who wrote one word of OTE either). Although I guess Tweet did also work on 3e core and I suppose has had few second thoughts about how it turned out. Looking at this I wonder how much you can separate your professional and personal lives anymore due to the internet. Then I realize there isn't any of this kind of drama coming out of M:TG devs, or for a better comparison, the Star Citizen devs or any of the other sets of newer companies that now communicate very robustly with the fanbase. Despite the fact that it's pretty much impossible for there not to be ideological mismatches. ...now I'm confused as to how this drama managed to blow up like it has. Or maybe the drama exists in these other places and I just don't see it because I'm not looking closely?
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Jul 31, 2014 16:32
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Here's another article. It names no names, but they're not that hard to puzzle out given the current context. e: although strictly speaking this is venturing away from 5e related stuff, so we can take it to the chat thread from here. Anyway, Zak's a pillock.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:33
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cross posting from the Art thread. I found the original piece of art that was used for the new PHB first page while helping one of my players find an avatar for our game. They trimmed it down significantly, I liked it to begin with, but the whole piece is even better. Artist is Ralph Horsley 
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Jul 31, 2014 16:56
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Parkreiner posted:It was honestly shocking to me that the designer/co-designer of genuinely innovative and ground-breaking games like Over the Edge and Ars Magica could be so completely regressive and hidebound when it came to D&D specifically (though for that matter, I find it hard to believe the BIOTRUTHS poo poo on his blog could come from a guy who wrote one word of OTE either). Holy poo poo, the guy is absolutely invested in some 1960s level evolutionary psychology bullshit, with some choice MRA-flavored bits about "high status males are adulterous BY NATURE". In 20-f*ing-11. Absolutely appalling. What is it with this hobby constantly attracting dumb nerd rejects who are literal walking Dunning-Kruger effects?
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Jul 31, 2014 17:11
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This piece really weirds me out - it's an awesome bit of art, but the posture/expression feels non-human in a way that I don't think it intends - the main character's absolutely rigid posture, combined with the not-real-world skin tones makes me think of some sort of animated statue / golem character. If that was intended, then 10/10, otherwise that dude really needs to pull the paladin out his rear end. Also, learn how to mix different artworks together, artist. Looking at you, PC-shadow and red-orc. [/artsperg]
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Jul 31, 2014 17:26
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zachol posted:If spells are going to appear on several different spell lists (for example, druids and bards both having some cleric spells but also some wizard spells), I'm not sure what a better choice would be rather than just an alphabetical list. Fireball Level 4 Druid/Bard/Warlock/Wizard Evocation It's otherwise really bad, because until you're really familiar with what's on who's spell list there's a ton of flipping back and forth. Like, case in point, "Eldrich Knight gets Wizard spells from the Evocation and Abjuration schools." Okay, cool, Evocation I get, that's all the blasty stuff, but Abjuration? So you flip through looking for Abjuration, but have to keep flipping back to see if these buff spells are even on the Wizard list in the first place.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:17
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Attestant posted:Sure, it might have sold, but it also split the fanbase bad enough that something like Pathfinder could exist -and- outlive 4e. Regardless of sales, this clearly scared the D&D folk something fierce. So 4e was sort of this fluke, a product made with an actual goal directed by people who do actual product research and development. When that oversight pulled away the remaining devs reverted to their gutfeels design processes because they personally identify more with the kinds of grogs who stuck with Pathfinder than they do the thousands and thousands of new players who jumped into 4e because it felt like a cool, modern, slightly-kitschy-nerd-chic board game and not weaponized nerd fuel.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:27
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Not to mention that Pathfinder only exists because Wizards foolishly allowed other companies to plagiarise their work and sell it as their own.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:32
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Laphroaig posted:"How to fanbase reacted to D&D 4E" you mean by buying a ton of it, playing it a lot, and making the online offerings into a big revenue stream? Or by hating the hell out of a miniatures game with teleporting fighters and other such shenanigans. They realized they did lose a batch of 3E-3.5E fans, and want to try to make a game that's popular amongst all edition fans?
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Jul 31, 2014 18:42
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5e works fine, good even, within its own little assumptions about how the game should be played and what the game should look like, it's just incredibly bad at communicating exactly what that means. In a funny way 5e is less plot-driven than 4e. 4e assumed that your characters were important people who would become embroiled in city/nation/world/universe spanning conflicts between factions and forces, and had mechanics that were copacetic with that, like high character durability, relative ease of resurrecting higher level characters, auto-resurrection with many Epic Destinies, and stuff like that. 5e tries not to assume, but works best when your characters are loners who get involved, but nothing really ever hinges on them, not in some prophetic destiny sort of way, at least. Which would be fine. I'm sure tons of people would love an RPG that was a direct call to Game of Thrones or Black Brigade style stories where important people can and do die and dead is dead because we're all eventually worm food.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:43
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I always said that DC (the comic book company, not the government) did nothing but bad decisions, and anything that resembled a good decision was only there to set up a future bad decision which would be even worse. So things like "bring in new legacy heroes who are minorities" that seemed like a good decision ended in stuff like "let's have this pointlessly edgy and grimdark psychopath murder the new Atom and then bury him in a matchbox like a kid's pet beetle". I'm starting to think that Wizards are the exact same way. Every decision is either a bad one, or it's just a big setup to a total "gently caress you" bad decision. So the good stuff like 4e is only there so they can go "we tried new things, everyone (we listened to) said it was terrible, so no more new things ever". But the thing is, DC has Marvel to constantly show them up and embarrass them in a multitude of ways. Wizards don't have any real rivals at the moment, and the closest we're liable to get is gonna be Paizo.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:47
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SirFozzie posted:Or by hating the hell out of a miniatures game with teleporting fighters and other such shenanigans. They realized they did lose a batch of 3E-3.5E fans, and want to try to make a game that's popular amongst all edition fans? Interestingly enough, many of 4e's hating points are either manufactured whole-cloth, or come from a deliberate bad-faith misinterpretation of rules and mechanics. Your quote here is especially exemplary of the mindset that produced Next - a game intended to be popular amongst all* edition fans.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:00
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SirFozzie posted:Or by hating the hell out of a miniatures game with teleporting fighters and other such shenanigans. They realized they did lose a batch of 3E-3.5E fans, and want to try to make a game that's popular amongst all edition fans? That would just mean he's dumb and boring. Eladrin Fighters and Swordmages are cool. (In good faith, I'm assuming you're talking about the actual teleporting swordmans in 4E, not the ones grogs imagine it has) I assume you're excluding 4E from "all edition", right? Mearls certainly is.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:24
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The low amount of 4E in 5E? Not a big loss to me (as I said, I bought 4th, looked at it, and said "This is many things, but it's not what I consider dungeons and dragons, not to mention the numerous missteps with the Neverwinter book (not really their fault, but they released the book the same time they announced the game it was based on would be delayed a year...) and the Forgotten Realms books (Hey, let's blow everything up and completely ruin the positives we've built with some ridiculous spellplague to make up for it).
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Jul 31, 2014 19:28
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SirFozzie posted:but it's not what I consider dungeons and dragons, What is not D&D about 4e?
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Jul 31, 2014 19:31
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Fun
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Jul 31, 2014 19:34
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Tight rules, focus.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:36
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MMO-like character building.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:41
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Peas and Rice posted:MMO-like character building. Nah, 4E's not that well designed. There's still loads of extraneous complexity and trap options to enable that classic D&D feel.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:45
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Peas and Rice posted:MMO-like character building. I swear you could make a checklist of talking points... eth0.n posted:Nah, 4E's not that well designed. There's still loads of extraneous complexity and trap options to enable that classic D&D feel. An issue that D&D has always had was that you almost had to construct your character all the way through their life, which is pretty annoying. Feat chains, or paragon paths, or prestige classes, whatever. From what I've seen of 5E that's mostly ameliorated by on one hand, lack of restrictions and on the other hand, lack of options. Not that I've built a Next character so maybe I'm missing the Charop opportunities/requirements - maybe someone who has can fill me in?
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Jul 31, 2014 19:48
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Fighters being able to do things.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:49
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SirFozzie posted:Forgotten Realms books (Hey, let's blow everything up and completely ruin the positives we've built with some ridiculous spellplague to make up for it). Maybe you can just read Ed Greenwood's dream journal about all of the cool things an alternate version of he and his wife did. That will get you your Forgotten Realms fix, of other, more important people, doing all of the actual heroing.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:50
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Maths
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Jul 31, 2014 19:51
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Balance. Fakedit: Damnit someone got in there and broke the chain. Seriously, 4e started something great, but wasn't successful enough, then they brought in a bunch of grogs halfway through to try and reimagine it (i.e. kill all the good stuff about fighters and make them basic-attack monkeys) instead of forging ahead. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing both my Slayer and my Knight, but they zigged when they shoudl have carried right on zagging. And yeah, the OGL was just a colossal error for anyone who wanted to keep ownership of their current crowd of people. Shame that 4e isn't so loosely licensed, it means a proper successor is very unlikely... E: gently caress me, I just read the fail forward blog and have JUST NOW realised what OSR means. I just thought it was a company that used to publish D&D. Am I confusing it with TSR?
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Jul 31, 2014 19:51
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Being able to make a capable party without a cleric, wizard or even any magic users at all 
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Jul 31, 2014 19:56
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It put fiat into the hands of all characters rather than concentrating it into full casters.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:56
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Having non poo poo monks.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:58
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Daetrin posted:I swear you could make a checklist of talking points... Alright, let me try a non-confrontational, non-dickish answer. I didn't like 4th Ed because it felt like making an MMO character. In fact, it felt like the engine of a computer RPG, which substitutes character development in the imagination based on the shared experiences around the table (remember that time we nearly died fighting those goblins?!) with preconstructed development trees for classes. I also think 3rd / 3.5 / Pathfinder rely too heavily on character maximization: it's less about building a fun character to play, and instead building the character that is the most effective (which, I realize, for some people IS the fun character to play). I really like 5E because I feel like it solves for both of these issues: the rules don't really lend themselves heavily to character maximization, and it doesn't feel like I'm running through an MMO or online RPG to build out my character. It's not as gummy as, say, Fate, but it feels like a stipped-down game of D&D that's more about getting you into the story and a group of characters having fun together. If I had to guess, most of the gamers who enjoy 4E are those who grew up on or were introduced to PC RPGs before tabletop RPGs, and those of us who don't, were introduced to tabletop games first. But that's just a guess. My group of 35-45 year olds loves 5th ed, for what it's worth.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:58
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Monster design that was fast and actually worked. Enjoyable DMing. Characters you didn't need to plan from Level 1. The ability to run a game without magic items, and it actually functions.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:05
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Peas and Rice posted:If I had to guess, most of the gamers who enjoy 4E are those who grew up on or were introduced to PC RPGs before tabletop RPGs, and those of us who don't, were introduced to tabletop games first. But that's just a guess. I'm 39 and have been playing since around 1982, with the Mentzer Basic set. I've played every edition since, and quite a lot of other rpgs besides.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:08
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