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crime fighting hog posted:Why do people say "it's like a videogame" like that's a bad thing? I'm assuming describing the system of rules/math as similar in ways that WoW has DPS, cooldowns and so on is supposed to be insulting? I dimply don't understand why videogames are considered a thing you wouldn't want your game to be similar to. Because roleplaying games are serious business, unlike video games.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:43
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Infinite Karma posted:4e's crunch was overwhelmingly focused on combat and combat balance. Stuff that want useful for combat, but was useful narratively was minimal. Look at the 3E spell Storm of Vengeance. It's high level, and pretty useless against high level threats. But it's a spell that could wipe out an entire army of regular joes. Of course, the DM could place a macguffin that's capable of it, but it's not the same as a player having a problem and finding a solution I'm his toolbox that the DM didn't have to build into the scenario. It kinda sucks when you can just reach into your handy dandy wizard-exclusive toolbox and solve All The Plot. Especially when nobody else gets anything even comparable. And anything that they can do the wizard can better. Rogue wants to disguise as the adviser of a corrupt king and stab him in his sleep? Alter Form, Cloudkill, done with way less mess. Fighter wants to rebuild the grand ruins of a city with his bare hands? Sorry bro you're over the carrying limit, let me skeleton army get that for you. Dragonborn devoting every concept he has to being more like a dragon? You'll never be as dragon-y as a Shapechanged wizard. Blacksmith who quests to create the finest sword in the land? Without being able to create magic items more like the finest piece of plastic in the land. And so long as he has them in his spellbook, the wizard can do all of the above whenever he wants.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:45
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crime fighting hog posted:Why do people say "it's like a videogame" like that's a bad thing? I'm assuming describing the system of rules/math as similar in ways that WoW has DPS, cooldowns and so on is supposed to be insulting? I dimply don't understand why videogames are considered a thing you wouldn't want your game to be similar to. World of Warcraft is the best-selling RPG of all time, and grogs hate that.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:45
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Because any jock with an xbox can play videogames. You need to be a gifted class AP ~intellectual~ to use your imagination. Now please creatively pick from this list of spells and tropes, while slavishly adhering to canon.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:46
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Infinite Karma posted:4e's crunch was overwhelmingly focused on combat and combat balance. Stuff that want useful for combat, but was useful narratively was minimal. Look at the 3E spell Storm of Vengeance. It's high level, and pretty useless against high level threats. But it's a spell that could wipe out an entire army of regular joes. Of course, the DM could place a macguffin that's capable of it, but it's not the same as a player having a problem and finding a solution I'm his toolbox that the DM didn't have to build into the scenario. I'm not really sure how using as an example a spell that's apparently mainly useful for killing armies really proves the point that 3E was less combat oriented than 4E since either way you slice it the end result is "use SPELL to kill dudes." You're just killing a whole bunch of dudes that would be boring to actually sit down and fight one-on-one.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:48
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crime fighting hog posted:Why do people say "it's like a videogame" like that's a bad thing? I'm assuming describing the system of rules/math as similar in ways that WoW has DPS, cooldowns and so on is supposed to be insulting? I dimply don't understand why videogames are considered a thing you wouldn't want your game to be similar to. Far as I can tell, referring to something as "videogamey" or "like a videogame" bears the connotation that something is artificial and sterile, and probably also needlessly restrictive. The hallmark of TRPGs is that they're open-ended adventures where you can do anything, whereas videogames are inherently bound by whatever the programmers and developers put in. Making an RPG "like a game" seems to imply that you're making the game feel less like "I am Cale of the Southern Mountains!" and more "I am a level 10 cleric here to grind for reputation in this raid." It implies monotony and shallowness, I suppose. Videogames also bear the stigma of being for children and people who like CoD, while TRPGs are for old nerds who think very highly of their own intelligence. It's loving stupid but that's the best explanation I could come up with.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:49
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Infinite Karma posted:4e's crunch was overwhelmingly focused on combat and combat balance. Stuff that want useful for combat, but was useful narratively was minimal. Look at the 3E spell Storm of Vengeance. It's high level, and pretty useless against high level threats. But it's a spell that could wipe out an entire army of regular joes. Of course, the DM could place a macguffin that's capable of it, but it's not the same as a player having a problem and finding a solution I'm his toolbox that the DM didn't have to build into the scenario. Arivia posted:Oh GOD 4e made the TERRIBLE MISTAKE of focusing on detailing the game that DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS historically DOES WELL and is THE MAJOR ACTUAL FOCUS OF PLAY, not THE PART I WISH THE GAME WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT. Yeah the focus wasn't any less focused on murderhoboing than any other edition of the game and that is including 5e. In fact I would argue and say it tried to add more mechanics relating to non-combat stuff than previous editions. Whether it was through utility powers (skill-based or class-based); through allowing all classes access to rituals and ritual-like out of combat processes like martial practices or alchemy; more importantly with the flawed skill-challenge system, which would've allowed for interesting skill based scenarios to play out where multiple players would co-operate and contribute to the success of it.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:52
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Arivia posted:Oh GOD 4e made the TERRIBLE MISTAKE of focusing on detailing the game that DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS historically DOES WELL and is THE MAJOR ACTUAL FOCUS OF PLAY, not THE PART I WISH THE GAME WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT.  or VIDEO GAMES AND ANIMES thing (both do role-playing fine, while the mechanical focus of each is, appropriately enough, very much a game) but OD&D and 4e do carry fairly different assumptions about what the focus of play is. (3.x is a bit more confused, admittedly.)
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Sep 23, 2014 19:53
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crime fighting hog posted:Why do people say "it's like a videogame" like that's a bad thing? I'm assuming describing the system of rules/math as similar in ways that WoW has DPS, cooldowns and so on is supposed to be insulting? I dimply don't understand why videogames are considered a thing you wouldn't want your game to be similar to. "Videogames" are things young kids play. RPGs (including CRPGs) are things beyond the understanding of those young children, and are therefore better. For a long time games have had an association with little boys, geeks, and boy geeks. It's going away, but it's still there. The more distance that people insecure about their hobbies can put between their tabletop game of choice and the perceived derision of games, the better. Some people never get to the point where they can analyze how games (for all ages, across all genres) do or do not accomplish their stated aims.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:55
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Oligopsony posted:Historically speaking, D&D had tactically uninteresting combat, and was focused around questions of logistics and attrition/resource management at the level of the adventure, rather than encounter. (Why all the encumbrance rules? Because that determines how much loot you can haul out of the dungeon, which is the primary determinant XP - facing things that can kill you/wear out your resources is to be avoided.) This isn't at all a ROLE-PLAYING VS. ROLL-PLAYING That pretty much died with AD&D, where it became about giant epic quests instead of "you and the boys raid some dungeons, get rich, chill in some mansions, and maybe later go meddle with the gods if you get bored." I'd love to see an old style dungeon crawler, or even a BECMI revival, but that hasn't been what D&D's wanted to be since the brand split.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:55
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A lot of people seriously use 'like a video game/mmo/whatever' in the pejorative sense because they literally do not understand even the most basic thing about any of those things. If they had any idea what they were saying, 'like a video game' would be used to mean things like 'this game was well considered, planned out, iterated upon, playtested, and had clear and consistent design focus and goals that the developers were working toward.' I mean for fucks sake, I heard a guy disparage 4e about a week ago by comparing it to a board game. Of course it's like a loving board game, dude! There are literally story telling board games, and dungeon crawling board games, etc, etc. Except, well, good board game designers realize that they can't do literally everything in a single package and are therefore trying to make a well made, focused product. homullus posted:"Videogames" are things young kids play. RPGs (including CRPGs) are things beyond the understanding of those young children, and are therefore better. For a long time games have had an association with little boys, geeks, and boy geeks. It's going away, but it's still there. The more distance that people insecure about their hobbies can put between their tabletop game of choice and the perceived derision of games, the better. Some people never get to the point where they can analyze how games (for all ages, across all genres) do or do not accomplish their stated aims. Basically, 
S.J. fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 19:55
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S.J. posted:A lot of people seriously use 'like a video game/mmo/whatever' in the pejorative sense because they literally do not understand even the most basic thing about any of those things. If they had any idea what they were saying, 'like a video game' would be used to mean things like 'this game was well considered, planned out, iterated upon, playtested, and had clear and consistent design focus and goals that the developers were working toward.' Wasn't there an actual D&D branded board game that was basically 4e-lite and apparently pretty good?
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Sep 23, 2014 19:58
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The Bee posted:That pretty much died with AD&D, where it became about giant epic quests instead of "you and the boys raid some dungeons, get rich, chill in some mansions, and maybe later go meddle with the gods if you get bored." quote:I'd love to see an old style dungeon crawler, or even a BECMI revival, but that hasn't been what D&D's wanted to be since the brand split.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:59
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Andrast posted:Wasn't there an actual D&D branded board game that was basically 4e-lite and apparently pretty good? A couple of them actually.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:05
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Seriouspost: if I wanted to play a game that was like a videogame, I'd play a videogame. I haven't played WoW for years, but when I did, I had fun. I enjoyed the mechanics. I'm not judging videogames as worse than TTRPGs. TTRPGs are unique because of the fact that your choices aren't limited to what Blizzard (or your DM) built for you. 4E added the fun of videogames to my D&D, but it also removed the fun of being the exception to the rules. And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, Storm of Vengeance wasn't even a Wizard spell. The time I needed it, I was playing a Ranger, and I went questing for an Orb of Storms (which is a magic item that anyone can use) that lets you control the weather and summon a Storm of Vengeance once a week. We wiped out the army, and still had to fight the big bad general in a setpiece battle.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:05
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Hey dude, I want to apologize. I wasn't trying to call you an antisemite. I was just shocked that your post, which read to me as obvious satire, was meant in earnest. It was like finding out that Sacha Baron Cohen actually believes that Jews have horns.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:07
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Infinite Karma posted:And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, Storm of Vengeance wasn't even a Wizard spell. The time I needed it, I was playing a Ranger, and I went questing for an Orb of Storms (which is a magic item that anyone can use) that lets you control the weather and summon a Storm of Vengeance once a week. We wiped out the army, and still had to fight the big bad general in a setpiece battle. Infinite Karma posted:Of course, the DM could place a macguffin that's capable of it, but it's not the same as a player having a problem and finding a solution I'm his toolbox that the DM didn't have to build into the scenario. So in other words you literally quested for a MacGuffin that was capable of solving the problem (by letting you cast a spell) and then wound up having a setpiece battle anyway. Again, I'm not sure this is proving the point you think it's proving, maybe it's just me.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:09
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Infinite Karma posted:TTRPGs are unique because of the fact that your choices aren't limited to what Blizzard (or your DM) built for you. 4E added the fun of videogames to my D&D, but it also removed the fun of being the exception to the rules.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:09
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5th edition is a fun game to play for good times. I look forward to playing it Thursday nights with old chums. Sometimes our figher hits things in and about the face and neck with a scimitar as some kind of Arabian knight guy. Sometimes he thinks "make us" is a good thing to tell an angry ghost who wants us to leave. Either way, hitting things is a good and fun activity which makes us gold.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:10
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Infinite Karma posted:And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, Storm of Vengeance wasn't even a Wizard spell. The time I needed it, I was playing a Ranger, and I went questing for an Orb of Storms (which is a magic item that anyone can use) that lets you control the weather and summon a Storm of Vengeance once a week. We wiped out the army, and still had to fight the big bad general in a setpiece battle. You mean your DM just placed a MacGuffin instead of letting you use the solutions in your toolbox? How videogamey.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:11
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Infinite Karma posted:And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, Storm of Vengeance wasn't even a Wizard spell. The time I needed it, I was playing a Ranger, and I went questing for an Orb of Storms (which is a magic item that anyone can use) that lets you control the weather and summon a Storm of Vengeance once a week. We wiped out the army, and still had to fight the big bad general in a setpiece battle. Storm of Vengeance is a spell that can be cast by Clerics and Druids and other divine casters by getting to level whatever and spending a night preparing it. It can be cast by a Ranger by getting the DM to create a special sidequest to go find a magic item that lets you do temporarily what the other classes can do whenever they want.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:12
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Infinite Karma posted:4E added the fun of videogames to my D&D, but it also removed the fun of being the exception to the rules. No, it didn't. It actually made it easier to understand how the exceptions to the rules you create will affect the game.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:16
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You know, there are a lot of good arguments here about why I should be running 13th Age instead of 5e, or even something like Legend, but I'm really done with 4e. It's not any one thing. Its a bunch of things.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:16
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ascendance posted:You know, there are a lot of good arguments here about why I should be running 13th Age instead of 5e, or even something like Legend, but I'm really done with 4e. It's not any one thing. Its a bunch of things. Like the stomachache you get from it not being "real" D&D.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:20
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Speaking of 13th age, does this edition actually do anything better that 13th age? I'm not the biggest fan of 13th age but it just seems to be a better version of this game. The disadvantage/advantage system might be a candidate.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:21
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ascendance posted:You know, there are a lot of good arguments here about why I should be running 13th Age instead of 5e, or even something like Legend, but I'm really done with 4e. It's not any one thing. Its a bunch of things. I mean, that's entirely fair. I wouldn't try to run a 4e game right now without sitting down and houseruling it intensively to strip out insane amounts of cruft, and I pretty much already used all that energy on Mage.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:23
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Arivia posted:Like the stomachache you get from it not being "real" D&D.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:24
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4e isn't enough of a departure from 3e for me to want to play it actually. It is in many ways the natural refinement of the d20 system.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:25
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Infinite Karma posted:And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, Storm of Vengeance wasn't even a Wizard spell. The time I needed it, I was playing a Ranger, and I went questing for an Orb of Storms (which is a magic item that anyone can use) that lets you control the weather and summon a Storm of Vengeance once a week. We wiped out the army, and still had to fight the big bad general in a setpiece battle. Hey I skipped some posts but I saw this and I literally cannot even guess if this story happened in 4e or 3e or 5e. I don't know if the post is pro-4e or anti. I don't even know if it is supposed to be part of a story about a time a game was awesome or about a time a game was lame. So either there really is no difference in the kinds of stories you can tell in 4e or 5e, or else this thread has simply broken me. Help, I can't tell the trolls from the seriousposts! I can't tell the grogs from the trolls! How will I know what to think??
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Sep 23, 2014 20:25
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Andrast posted:Speaking of 13th age, does this edition actually do anything better that 13th age? I'm not the biggest fan of 13th age but it just seems to be a better version of this game. Why aren't you a fan of 13th Age, out of curiosity?
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Sep 23, 2014 20:26
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Infinite Karma posted:TTRPGs are unique because of the fact that your choices aren't limited to what Blizzard (or your DM) built for you. 4E added the fun of videogames to my D&D, but it also removed the fun of being the exception to the rules. This is actually kind of deprecating to the fact that when you look into the history of the game, WoW actually has a lot of instances of players being the exception to the rules and Blizzard (like good DMs do) let it happen, then patched it out. Cases in point: Lord Kazzak razes Stormwind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0VWJdE01M) Players took advantage of a number of rules mechanics: 1. Kazzak, at the time, would aggro and follow players to the ends of the earth until he killed them. Well, at least to the ends of the earth on the same continent. 2. Kazzak, after 5 minutes, has an enrage timer in which he enters Supreme Mode and can and will one-shot any Level 60 player and below. 3. Kazzak, when he kills a player, refills his health bar thus making him unkillable. 4. Cities are full of people and guards who will constantly aggro Kazzak until he kills every last one of them, after which he will return to his usual spot. Using these rules, players kited Kazzak to Stormwind (the major Alliance city) whereupon he would massacre its residents since kiting him there took longer than 5 minutes and triggered Supreme Mode. He would be impossible to kill and guards would respawn often enough to keep him within the city on a rather permanent basis (until GMs killed him). Corrupted Blood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoN4nCaULGo) Again, players took advantage of some rules mechanics to introduce a plague (originally a short-term debuff that existed within a raid) to the rest of the population that absolutely massacred everyone and everything. People still cite this today as an interesting study into infectious diseases and how populations react to them. Entering Karazhan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW_uv_qhX8g) Using a glitch, players could enter a dungeon that technically wasn't supposed to be accessible in the game. It included one of the creepiest rooms in the game, and having actually gone there and explored it was a point of pride for many players. There are even more that I'm forgetting, but the overall message is this: Good design isn't exclusive to video games, just like how emergent gameplay isn't exclusive to TTRPGs. People need to stop being all like "but you got your WoWs in my D&Ds!" and vice-versa because these aspects of design and gameplay are not mutually exclusive to either art form.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:27
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Jimbozig posted:Hey I skipped some posts but I saw this and I literally cannot even guess if this story happened in 4e or 3e or 5e. I don't know if the post is pro-4e or anti. I don't even know if it is supposed to be part of a story about a time a game was awesome or about a time a game was lame. Use MonsterEnvy as the control group
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Sep 23, 2014 20:28
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Ferrinus posted:I mean, that's entirely fair. I wouldn't try to run a 4e game right now without sitting down and houseruling it intensively to strip out insane amounts of cruft, and I pretty much already used all that energy on Mage.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:28
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I don't think anyone is trying to evangelize the Good News of 4e, but it's relevant in a discussion of what Next does and doesn't do. There's a trend of "Next doesn't X, unlike 4e..." and almost universally those attributed things are either misconceptions or falsehoods. A lot of Next's "best" things look good in direct comparison with the boogeyman 4e MMO that grogs fear and loathe, but that game doesn't exist outside of their imaginations or bad faith attempts to play.Infinite Karma posted:And if you're grogging over Wizard Supremacy, This is too perfect to be sincere.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:30
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ascendance posted:Depends on how much you value classic D&D spells, and the ability to go from level 1 to 20. If the answer to both those questions is 'no', then you might be better off playing 13th Age. Oh, and support for a grid. I think 13th Age ToTM is a bit screwy. It has some legacy D&D trappings that I personally don't like. Most of the official martial classes are also really boring compared to the casters.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:31
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Andrast posted:Speaking of 13th age, does this edition actually do anything better that 13th age? I'm not the biggest fan of 13th age but it just seems to be a better version of this game.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:32
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13th age is basically a more honest 5e with slightly worse production values.ascendance posted:I just don't want to have to put up with managing all the cruft. Also, dealing with all the crazy, rapidly inflating numbers, and all those modifiers. You always miss at least one. It's awful. What basically has to happen is for feats and items to die and for the six ability scores to be refactored such that all of your combat stats flow neatly out of them and nothing else - that way you could keep using all the paragon path/epic destiny/regular old class feature and power stuff intact. Even so, you'd have to take an axe (heh) to the equipment list, look at stat-swapping class features on an individual basis, etc.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:32
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Something else about WoW: they spend more money on design and QA by several orders of magnitude. That poo poo is way more balanced than D&D could ever possibly be. But come on, D&D has never been balanced. It was never part of its fundamental DNA.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:32
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Infinite Karma posted:Seriouspost: if I wanted to play a game that was like a videogame, I'd play a videogame. I haven't played WoW for years, but when I did, I had fun. I enjoyed the mechanics. I'm not judging videogames as worse than TTRPGs. Let me just say this: 4e tried to do noncombat stuff well. It didn't work very well because rituals were fiddly and the skill system was held back by legacy mechanics and all the cool noncombat magic items were buried in a sea of Swords of +2 Combat Stuff and feats were a mess and skill challenges were just kind of bad, but they tried. They failed for the most part, but they tried. 3.5 (and presumably 5e, although the DMG could still have good noncombat stuff in theory) don't try to do noncombat stuff well. They give you a basic mechanic, they give you a bunch of things that could do interesting things in noncombat situations (at a very uneven distribution, but you already acknowledged that so whatever), and instead of giving you good advice for actually doing noncombat stuff they give you some tables and tell you to figure it out yourself. So yeah. If people are mad at you, it's because 4e had more support for actual gameable stuff that isn't part of the standard "enter dungeon kill goblins get loot" structure, it just got buried under the combat stuff because the noncombat mechanics were bad to meh and the combat mechanics were great. (Also because people have been calling 4e tabletop WoW for the better part of six years now and it's getting real drat old, but that's not your fault.)
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Sep 23, 2014 20:34
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ascendance posted:Something else about WoW: they spend more money on design and QA by several orders of magnitude. There's balanced and there's balanced, though. Like, is a wizard balanced with a cleric? gently caress if I know, too much stuff is going on to make that determination. Is a wizard balanced with a rogue? Absolutely not, the wizard has a way bigger, better toolbox with which to do things.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:35
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