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Poison Mushroom posted:It died the same reason every system dies. People will only buy so many sourcebooks for a system. The line of books died, sure, but like no one I know IRL plays 4e anymore while 3.5 is alive and well. The game of 4e is pretty dead in a way that many other no longer supported RPGs aren't.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:42
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Countblanc posted:The line of books died, sure, but like no one I know IRL plays 4e anymore while 3.5 is alive and well. The game of 4e is pretty dead in a way that many other no longer supported RPGs aren't. I think that's maybe a little subjective. The only people I know who still play DnD play 4e. Hell, I'm the only guy I know who owns the Pathfinder sourcebook, though I've never got to use it.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:45
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Countblanc posted:The line of books died, sure, but like no one I know IRL plays 4e anymore while 3.5 is alive and well. The game of 4e is pretty dead in a way that many other no longer supported RPGs aren't.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:46
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Countblanc posted:The line of books died, sure, but like no one I know IRL plays 4e anymore while 3.5 is alive and well. The game of 4e is pretty dead in a way that many other no longer supported RPGs aren't. As of a year ago, a considerable time after 5th was being worked on, there were enough paying customers for D&D Insider that it was making comparable money to the entire Paizo product line. Your IRL friends are not broadly representative.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:47
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Look I'm not edition warring. I'm just saying that in my experience D&D 4e started having trouble when Mearls took over and started gutting the line and also multi-tapping and zone abuse started to become a thing. Some of these arguments just aren't working for me. They stopped releasing books WELL before before people had "got their fill" and willing to give up on the system, historically speaking anyway. If 3/3.5 showed anything it was that people were willing to Buy A Lot Of poo poo for Dungeons and Dragons and in this case the books fell off a cliff after Essentials. Also in hindsight trashing the Forgotten Realms was a huge misstep as well and they shouldn't have done that. It was pointless and they did nothing but piss off really invested people.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:54
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fatherdog posted:As of a year ago, a considerable time after 5th was being worked on, there were enough paying customers for D&D Insider that it was making comparable money to the entire Paizo product line. Your IRL friends are not broadly representative. Good.
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Mar 25, 2015 22:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Does anyone have a link to a good essay about "what killed 4e" that isn't just gravedancing or stupid random poo poo? I wasn't able to find one using Google, and I feel this might be a topic worth writing about. One thing that I'm concerned about is that the 3.5 people are quite literally erasing reality and saying that the system failed because it was rejected en masse, when it seems to me that it died mostly from bad bloat, bad adventures, a few fundamental math problems that were easily fixed, and of course the most important thing - Mearls deciding to kill it dead because it wasn't "real D&D". I wrote a post in the 5e thread that's tangentially about this. Near as I can tell, it's Mearls being Mearls. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647634&pagenumber=105&perpage=40#post433781387
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Mar 25, 2015 23:00
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Last week, I went to a D&D game, invited by one of my coworkers. 3.5e, Forgotten Realms. I went in with a kind of goofy concept (Zhi Bhest, a bard with a whip and Improved Trip who uses Perform (Oratory) by telling bad jokes). It was decided, mostly without any of my input, that my character was a eunuch and an escaped former harem-boy. The DM then repeatedly called me/my character "ISIS" and "towelhead". I spent most of the combat being ineffectual because the DM shut me down for being a rules lawyer every time I tried to bring up the only thing that made my character worthwhile (the Attack of Opportunity rules). This was on top of the campaign being built mostly around the PCs being agents for the DM's old character, a self-insert with twin katanas, twin pistols, illegitimate children in every possible region of FR, and like 40 levels in every class. I don't think I'll be going back. (To make it relevant to this thread, I mentioned 4e in passing, and basically the entire table responded with kneejerk hostility.)
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Mar 25, 2015 23:02
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That's a good post, and tracks with my experience. But it's just a post in a thread about D&D Next. Hmmm I think I might write an essay on this. Throwing Real History in the Memory Hole doesn't sit well with me. Poison Mushroom posted:(To make it relevant to this thread, I mentioned 4e in passing, and basically the entire table responded with kneejerk hostility.) Yeah, this sounds like the kinds of people that I know that don't like 4e as well. Big surprise.
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Mar 25, 2015 23:05
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Oh man where to start. I don't have a good essay, but: Looong combat. The fighting is horrendously time-consuming for a number of reasons that could be an article in and of itself. Everything outside of combat is an afterthought. People have argued that everything outside of combat is realistically an afterthought in every edition, but 4E takes it to a new level. In 4E the problem outside of overlong combat is the skill challenge, a broken and tediously boring mechanic that stands in place of having any kind of intelligent interaction with the game world or coming up with your own ideas as a player. It is used in the modules as a short-hand skip around making players think. While there are other ways to handle things besides the skill challenge in 4E, the game de-emphasizes doing it any other way, especially the modules. Real bad adventures. All but three of the twenty or so Wednesday encounters modules were extremely dull railway games. Players had essentially no way to affect the plot (aside from perhaps burning it down) or approach the setpieces in a unique way from other players. A lot of the stuff published outside of that was the same. The last few Encounters modules were better, but also tended to involve Forgotten Realms' plethora of untouchable glorified DMPCs. The players' choice in Murder in Baldur's Gate was to decide which NPC to support in their claim to rule the city. Who cares? Modules tended to be poorly balanced for combat. I have played the generally-agreed "best" module, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, and I would endorse it as merely OK. Its big innovation over others seems to be the players having a choice in what order they accomplish things. Mike Mearls did not understand or believe in 4E. The stuff he worked on for the edition is in general the worst-quality stuff that exists for it, and everywhere he went he broke mechanics and enforced a backward view of how games should work. He is also demonstrably an unbelievably horrible DM, which matters when you are the lead designer. Finally, he has also essentially lied and said 4E was a financial failure as part of the 5E marketing push. Bloat. Yeah the game is bloated, the way almost all D&D games are. It is better than 3E by a mile, where the actual metagame was completely obscured by intentionally-made garbage options, but still bad. Errors in basic balance mathematics in 4E were "corrected" by writing feats that are mandatory to take if you want to be baseline effective. It would have been remarkably easier to simply subtract a couple of numbers from monster defenses across the board. A lot of the metagame in 4E is how to get something called a basic attack, a thing that not everyone really has and that only some people want in certain situations. I mean, holy poo poo. If you don't have one and want one, there's bloat for that. The last ten levels of the game are an afterthought in terms of how much attention they got--basically paragon tier with slower combat and an auto-res ability. Bad online tools. 4E is a massive step forward--several years later than it should have been made--in that it actually had functional online tools made by a real company. They are pretty bad though. The character builder uses the even-at-the-time antiquated Silverlight and is buggy as gently caress. At 1st level it spits out a six-page character sheet which somehow even then does not really help you understand what your character can do, because it abbreviates important details and doesn't list others at all, sometimes getting math wrong too. The online tools don't really have cross-compatibility with anything and you feel like you're ramming square pegs into round holes when you try to do anything with the resources, like make an adventure. Pathfinder. Paizo branded Pathfinder the true D&D successor and marketed it successfully as an improved version of 3E (when it actually fixes nothing and has its own huge mechanical problems). This capitalizes on the fact that many gamers are suspicious of change (especially 4E's broad change) and 4E's many failings. If an essay doesn't address at least some of these things, it's basically talking out its rear end. Name Change fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 25, 2015 23:06
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Is there a non-Insider resource I can use to easily search magic items by level? I have access to a fair amount of source books between myself and my DM, but it would be handy to be able to just search by level instead of trawling through a bunch of different lists.
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Mar 25, 2015 23:12
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I wrote a post in the 5e thread that's tangentially about this. Near as I can tell, it's Mearls being Mearls. That was a good post when I read it the first time, and it's a good post now.
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Mar 25, 2015 23:25
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I'm sort of skeptical about the "people are only willing to buy so many books" line of reasoning. If you averaged out the number of books I bought for the system, it probably came out to 1 or 2 a year, but they got my DDI payment every month. Hell, if money wasn't so tight for me at the moment I'd still probably be subscribed. I'm not even in a game right now! Killing off the line without an equivalent revenue stream at least planned out just seems too dumb for it have been about money. Although I guess this is an industry that is ruled by terrible business decisions, so I wouldn't be shocked if that was the reason.
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Mar 25, 2015 23:46
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The reason I've always thought 4e declined so hard is that the people that like(d) it are the people who value well-designed games. And while 4e is pretty drat good on that front, there are enough flaws that eventually they just start to wear on you once you've seen them. Plus it really is a very niche game, even among RPGs. If the entire group doesn't dig the tactical combat enough to really nerd out about it, you're playing the wrong game. Most modern D&D has been largely about tactical combat, but the other two editions obfuscate it better (I'd argue TSR-era D&D is probably more about thinking outside the box and avoiding combat, even if most of the rules in the books are combat-related).
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Mar 25, 2015 23:58
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ImpactVector posted:The reason I've always thought 4e declined so hard is that the people that like(d) it are the people who value well-designed games. And while 4e is pretty drat good on that front, there are enough flaws that eventually they just start to wear on you once you've seen them. I don't think your second premise is true. Three of the broad tendencies of gamers have a game almost completely suited for them, one other tendency is indifferent to actual play, so we have to ask ourselves if the remainder are so underserved that 4e fails them completely.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:08
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Sales figures for this stuff aren't very reliable or even public a lot of the time. 4e making WOTC less money of otherwise declining isn't a fact, at least not a publicly available one. It's really more of an assertion. Bei Fong's post is probably the most thought-out answer we're liable to get: the guy in charge of D&D isn't enough of a fuckup for someone higher up to fix the game.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:13
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Effectronica posted:I don't think your second premise is true. Three of the broad tendencies of gamers have a game almost completely suited for them, one other tendency is indifferent to actual play, so we have to ask ourselves if the remainder are so underserved that 4e fails them completely. In any case, maybe I'm just projecting based on anecdotal experience. The last two groups I've had, about half the group just tuned out during tactical combat. It just didn't hold any interest to them. Or they felt restricted by the rules on the power cards, even though I let them flip tables and squish goblins and such. In those groups, Dungeon World was a much better fit. On the other hand, the guys from my old college group (who were veterans of everything from oWoD to 3.x to MtG) took to 4e like fish to water.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:28
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ImpactVector posted:What tendencies are you referring to? The ones from the DMG, but I can only remember the names Robin Laws used for them ATM.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:36
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I could totally see someone running the Keep on the Shadowfell pre-written adventure while their players struggled to keep track of their powers in the PHB deciding that 4e is garbage and not playing it again. 4e requires a GM who writes their own stuff, power cards you can flip when the power's used, and Monster Manual 3 maths for the monsters.
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Mar 26, 2015 11:21
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I like 4e much better than 3.5 , but then again, I never paid much attention to official adventures and whatnot. I'm a big fan of drawing maps myself and littering them with stupid crap to interact with (or having them littered by the players). And I absolutely love the concept of powers, although Dailys are somewhat annoying (people tend to hoard and obsess over when to use them... Just use them when you wanna hit real good, stop thinking AAARRGHHH). I've never played without powers as actual playing cards. I'm also a big fan of repurposing powers for all kinds of stuff, making them much more abstract in the process - I love interpreting the abstract mechanics of powers, I couldn't imagine NOT doing that. Thankfully, my players started doing that too: the Goliath's innate stone skin ability becomes ridiculously powerful flexing, a tiefling's curse become insults so mean they catch on fire in mid-air... Sometimes, we play more with the power names than the actual mechanics, and that's alright with me. I think it's much more versatile and action-y fun than 3.5. Hell, even back in 3.5, my absolute favorite book was Tome of Battle. I only played a fighter-type once in 3.5, and that was enough to sour me on the whole thing - even a powergaming barbarian player I knew was bored out of his mind by Level 6 or so. And that one time we tried a Lv.20 dungeonrun with all the fun powergaming and optimizing we could get our hands on, it was still a kinda unfun, bloated mess. If anything, I wish 4th edition would have even LESS fiddly bits, and it's just grid-based combat with power cards and tactical movement. I'm always tempted to throw out even MORE math: scrap stats all together, make everything a skill, give out MUCH fewer feats and make them fun mini-powers or something, and who the hell needs half the level on every check, nobody wants to rewrite the numbers for every second level, I'm far too lazy for that.  Now I guess someone will tell me that some system already does that... Which would be good to know. Torquemadras fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 13:16
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Gort posted:I could totally see someone running the Keep on the Shadowfell pre-written adventure while their players struggled to keep track of their powers in the PHB deciding that 4e is garbage and not playing it again. I actually want to try running Keep on the Shadowfell with fixed MM3 math, the online tools, inherent bonuses, free feat taxes, prior warning of how combat heavy it is and see how that works out. Torquemadras posted:If anything, I wish 4th edition would have even LESS fiddly bits, and it's just grid-based combat with power cards and tactical movement. I'm always tempted to throw out even MORE math: scrap stats all together, make everything a skill, give out MUCH fewer feats and make them fun mini-powers or something, and who the hell needs half the level on every check, nobody wants to rewrite the numbers for every second level, I'm far too lazy for that. This is exactly what you asked for, so have you considered Strike RPG? gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 13:23
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Does anyone have a link to a good essay about "what killed 4e" that isn't just gravedancing or stupid random poo poo? I wasn't able to find one using Google, and I feel this might be a topic worth writing about. One thing that I'm concerned about is that the 3.5 people are quite literally erasing reality and saying that the system failed because it was rejected en masse, when it seems to me that it died mostly from bad bloat, bad adventures, a few fundamental math problems that were easily fixed, and of course the most important thing - Mearls deciding to kill it dead because it wasn't "real D&D". Not really. But in a nutshell: Step 1: 4e was written in half the time intended because 10 months into the 24 month development cycle they realised they had a bad game and threw everything out to start from scratch. That year of missing dev time meant that it was almost a year after launch that it was a decent game. (I'm not criticising the decision to redo from scratch - but they needed more time to kick the bugs out of the math and the presentation). 4e was launched in mid 2008 but didn't really sing until 2009. Strike 1. Step 2: The adventure 4e was launched with, Keep on the Shadowfell, was awful. Mike Mearls' first adventure was boring, uninspired, and precisely the sort of piece of boring crap 4e handles worse than any other edition. (It's not even entertainingly bad like The Forest Oracle - just dull and grindy). Many people who went into 4e with an open mind played this and found it a terrible experience and thought that that was the way 4e was meant to be. Strike 2 Step 3: The people most likely to talk about D&D on the internet were those who were most invested in it. They were generally the people who liked things like Caster Supremacy, and who hated change. They managed to turn discussion about 4e into a toxic pile of sludge full of outright lies. So Internet message boards had a hate on for 4e. Strike 3. The 4e online presence is limited because it's just not worth it. Step 4: Paizo. Stupid policy decisions by WotC left a company with massive reach and a legitimate grudge against WotC, and full license to do whatever they liked with the 3.5 rules. I've no time at all for Paizo's mechanics, but as a company they are superb, doing just about everything right. If only Pathfinder was a better game... Pathfinder was launched in mid 2009. Step 5: Essentials in late 2010. In response to Pathfinder, Mearls produced Essentials which was an attempt to court 3.5 fans with 4e rules about a year after Pathfinder came out. This starts an edition war within the 4E community, brings in almost no new people, and causes people to stop buying new 4e stuff because it's not useful. The 4e fanbase is further pissed off because the Offline Character Builder stops being updated and a lot of home groups stick to just what's in the builder. Step 6: Within six months (early 2011), by producing a lot of material, Pathfinder overtakes post-Essentials D&D in gaming shops. They are at this point producing more books per month than WotC is in a quarter Step 7: The last 4e book is produced in early-mid 2012 - and is pretty terrible and half full of adverts for other WotC products (the Dungeon Survival Handbook). In mid-late 2012 Wizards tries to produce a systemless book about Menzobarranzan which sinks like a stone (only a few hundred copies sold I think). Step 8: D&D 5e announced at the end of 2012, surprising almost no one. Step 9: In November 2013 (the last date we have publically available data), D&D Insider had an annual income of approximately half Paizo's entire annual turnover. (Boards changes mean we no longer know how many subscribers there are). This despite Mearls pissing off the entire engaged 4e fanbase. Step 10: In mid-late 2014 5e is given a staggered launch. There's almost nothing for people to buy after this.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:48
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I've never found a creditable article/source for this, but 1. The 4e books were best sellers up until the release of Essentials, and 2. The known number of subscribers for DDI would dwarf even the most optimistic estimates for Pathfinder, and both of those put paid to the lie that 4e wasn't a successful game. It's true that 4e had its share of flaws that were never really completely fixed (not even by 5e!), and it's even arguably true that there are things 4e doesn't do well. But the fact of the matter is the most vocal critics of 4e rarely ever talk about its legitimate issues and would rather focus on falsehoods and/or fundamental misunderstandings of the game, while also projecting their personal disagreement with the kind of game 4e is or isn't into a belief that it wasn't a successful game from a business perspective. Everything we know tells us it absolutely was at least up until Essentials.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've never found a creditable article/source for this, but 1. The 4e books were best sellers up until the release of Essentials, and 2. The known number of subscribers for DDI would dwarf even the most optimistic estimates for Pathfinder, and both of those put paid to the lie that 4e wasn't a successful game. As much as I love 4e, I found very few people who actually played it outside of a few small groups. Almost everyone I know who plays DND love's 3.5 and thinks I'm some strange curiosity for playing 4e and wanting to play 4e. Hell, I can't even offer to DM 4e games and get players. However, when it comes to to 3.5/pathfinder, I have invites coming out the rear end. Which sucks, as I really have grown to hate 3.5, after playing Martial classes and having them be good. I hate all the book keeping required to play a 3.5 mage, of any stripe. Yeah 4e had lots of fiddly bonuses, but you could calculate that poo poo ahead of time , and it only really was an issue for strikers.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's true that 4e had its share of flaws that were never really completely fixed (not even by 5e!), and it's even arguably true that there are things 4e doesn't do well. But the fact of the matter is the most vocal critics of 4e rarely ever talk about its legitimate issues and would rather focus on falsehoods and/or fundamental misunderstandings of the game, while also projecting their personal disagreement with the kind of game 4e is or isn't into a belief that it wasn't a successful game from a business perspective. Everything we know tells us it absolutely was at least up until Essentials. One of the reasons why critics don't talk about 4e's legitimate issues is, of course, that they don't know about them, since they 'knew' that 4e was trash from even a cursory glance, but I digress. I think one of the reasons why people have moved from 4e is pretty simple: 4e very quickly asked the question 'do you enjoy crunchy, tactical combat?' which is essentially 4e's main field of innovation. If the answer is no, then you'll probably begin looking for a more free-form, combat-light RPG. Which just so happened to come along perfectly with Dungeon World, as well as other products like 13th age. Even Strike!! as already mentioned is that style of game, although it cleaves closer to 4e in terms of combat. If you want crunchy tactical combat, you don't have to deal with grognards and edition warriors to get it if you look outside dungeons and dragons. Basically, people who didn't want to play 4e didn't play it: Those who wanted the RPG elements, but weren't a fan of the combat have better systems, and those who want the crunchy combat can also get their fair share from other sources, without harassment and the community.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:39
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I actually legitimately enjoyed some of the essentials classes because they were interesting from a flavor perspective. Mainly the Hexblade, Sentinel Druid, and the Warpriest Cleric. The Slayer, Scout, Thief, and Hunter were just bizarre. In exchange for not being able to make any choices as you level up you instead have to make a bunch of really tiny choices that don't matter much every round. And they didn't pass the flavor test like the previous three classes did "Dude who can sometimes hit things harder than other times" isn't nearly as interesting as "Dude who tricked the stars into giving him a sword" or "Man who wades into battle with his pet bear to heal people". The mage wasn't needed though. It's easier to understand and more powerful than the base Wizard without giving up any of it's utility. The hardcover Heroes Of books (Shadow, feywild, and Elemental Chaos) did better, probably because they weren't dealing with the dreaded martial classes, but they were still really wizard heavy(Introducing two more versions!) and had the Binder. The primary sin of the Essentials books though was making everything key off of MBAs, allowing for ridiculous rules abuse if you were able to half-elf, human, or feat an at-will into an MBA.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:46
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neonchameleon posted:Not really. But in a nutshell: Huh, I actually thought it was really good at launch. But ok. Something else to think about. I had forgotten about how terrible Keep on the Shadowfell was. And that Mike Mearls had written it. Good stuff. I'm basically getting four things here in order of importance: Mearls never really seemd to "get" 4e, produced bad content, survived the purges and layoffs only to de facto kill the line with Essentials. In fact was basically the poison splinter that killed the brand Published adventures were just awful and played to the weaknesses of the system, not the strength. In fact 4e was so tight that if you slopped it, it was immediately and catastrophically noticeable - also hurt add on classes and other stuff Pathfinder jumped in there and did a fantastic job of marketing themselves as the Real D&D for the Discriminating Gamer 4e itself got bogged down at high levels and with too much bloat and never got its head around what to do outside of combat Agreed, disagreed? Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 16:47
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Torchlighter posted:If you want crunchy tactical combat, you don't have to deal with grognards and edition warriors to get it if you look outside dungeons and dragons. What are some examples here, because I've yet to find anything that does crunchy tactical combat anywhere near as well as 4e, and the only suggestion I've heard when I've asked for something before is WHFRP, which costs like $200 for the basic set.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:52
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Kick whoever told you WHFRP has tactical combat even in the same galaxy as how well 4e does it squarely in the face. Strike is pretty cool and cheap to boot, but the sheer amount of 4e content (classes, monsters etc) puts it in front as far as I'm concerned. Ignore WHFRP, play 4e, Strike and Dungeon World. Gort fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 16:55
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Huh, I actually thought it was really good at launch. But ok. Something else to think about. I disagree really with only the last statement. 4e was a game that seemed to live by the mantra "Roll play in combat, Role play out of Combat" The skills were intentionally vague so that you would be good at a wide class of things, and your method and description of those actions was important. I don't need to spend skill points in cape flourishing to flourish my cape in a dashing manner, thats taken into the diplomacy roll. Honestly, 3.5 players, and by extension pathfinder players, seem to require the system to tell them what they were able to do outside of fights. Lots of points placed in niche skills so you can weave a basket or forge a sword is ridiculous, role play whatever that is, and how its giving you the bonus, and BOOM, the dm can give you that bonus as a feat or item or boon or whatever.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:57
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fatherdog posted:What are some examples here, because I've yet to find anything that does crunchy tactical combat anywhere near as well as 4e, and the only suggestion I've heard when I've asked for something before is WHFRP, which costs like $200 for the basic set. WHFRPG is basically the FFGiest of FFG's rpgs. It sort of has powers that you can expend like 4e does, but it lacks any kind of role definition on the scale of CLDS. It also has EOTE's dice but instead of character sheets it uses cardboard punch outs and class decks like that one World of Warcraft board game that I've only played twice because it takes 4 hours to set up and a table about three times larger than any I own.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:02
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Madmarker posted:I disagree really with only the last statement. 4e was a game that seemed to live by the mantra "Roll play in combat, Role play out of Combat" The skills were intentionally vague so that you would be good at a wide class of things, and your method and description of those actions was important. I don't need to spend skill points in cape flourishing to flourish my cape in a dashing manner, thats taken into the diplomacy roll. Honestly, 3.5 players, and by extension pathfinder players, seem to require the system to tell them what they were able to do outside of fights. Lots of points placed in niche skills so you can weave a basket or forge a sword is ridiculous, role play whatever that is, and how its giving you the bonus, and BOOM, the dm can give you that bonus as a feat or item or boon or whatever. I'm sorry, let me clarify: skill challenges sucked, basically didn't work very well, and the published adventures and dragon magazine stuff were very railroady pieces of skill challenge into the next combat into the next combat into the next skill challenge affairs. So reading this it was pretty obvious that the designers were mostly focused on fighting. BTW I talked with a friend of mine about 4e, a big supporter when we ran it in 2009 - 2010 and was surprised to find out that he really had fallen out of favor with it. He loved it when we played (he said) but now he's saying that he was kinda bored by all the fighting (too much fighting that took too long) and wouldn't play again. Just an interesting tidbit. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 17:06
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Yeah, I don't know what the guys who wrote the published adventures were smoking - three combats, two skill challenges and five sentences of flavour text is a poo poo "adventure" in any system. It's particularly bad because 4e is the easiest system in the world to build combats in, so the work they did was the least useful work they could have done.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:13
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Does anyone have a link to a good essay about "what killed 4e" that isn't just gravedancing or stupid random poo poo? I wasn't able to find one using Google, and I feel this might be a topic worth writing about. The most concise thought I ever heard from a friend was "when engaging in identity-play I don't like having my character reduced to combat mechanics." Although somewhat hypebolic, I think it captures the idea that, although 4E excelled at what it focused on, some people did not like that focus (arguments about 3.5 being a the best fit for some other purpose aside).
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Mar 26, 2015 17:25
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Paolomania posted:The most concise thought I ever heard from a friend was "when engaging in identity-play I don't like having my character reduced to combat mechanics." Although somewhat hypebolic, I think it captures the idea that, although 4E excelled at what it focused on, some people did not like that focus (arguments about 3.5 being a the best fit for some other purpose aside).
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Mar 26, 2015 17:45
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think Attorney at Funk said it best in another thread, that the problem with 4e (that led to statements like the above) is that 4e is the first D&D to most transparently express the truth that's been present in all D&Ds prior: your character, as far an RPG rules set is concerned, is a collection of mechanics. When they're well-designed, or presented within a consistent system, it peels aware the layer of self-deception that lets a person think that roleplaying is something inherent to the sheet or system to begin with. Which understandably rustles some jimmies when you're a lot more used to, and comfortable with, being lied to. I think there's also the whole "3e/d20 is a universal system" thing, which I remember a lot of people buying into back in the day.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:52
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Gort posted:Kick whoever told you WHFRP has tactical combat even in the same galaxy as how well 4e does it squarely in the face. I have a copy of Strike which I intend to try out, but Dungeon World is the polar opposite of "crunchy tactical combat".
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Mar 26, 2015 18:05
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fatherdog posted:I have a copy of Strike which I intend to try out, but Dungeon World is the polar opposite of "crunchy tactical combat". Yep. Play it as a palate cleanser between 4e and Strike.
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Mar 26, 2015 18:13
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Design stuff aside, my players have hit paragon tier in our 4e game. poo poo is about to get real. Most are taking the Zeitgeist paragon paths, and I have to say, I'm thrilled one is taking Polyhistor. It's crazy and I'd love to play one. It looks like it was inspired by the earlier drafts of the 5e Fighter, with martial dice useful for combat tricks. There is a lot of MBA love, but still... Interesting.
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Mar 26, 2015 18:48
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dwarf74 posted:Design stuff aside, my players have hit paragon tier in our 4e game. poo poo is about to get real. I remember liking most of the Zeitgeist Paragon POaths when I read it, and it's one of the things that made me sad I couldn't get my buddies to try more than one session of it. I think I like the one that gives you powered armour or the one that lets you argue with the universe so hard that it conforms to your desires the best.
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Mar 26, 2015 19:25
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