Quote from: Elliot Wilen;263410Also...

Taking your anecdote at face value, you've got a point there; you've shown that Cranewings' observations of Palladium and WoD aren't easily generalized.

But right there in your counterexample, you suggest that there's a typical style of play in CP 2020. Why do you suppose that is—how much of it can be chalked up to the rules, and how much to other factors?

I actually think it's more to do with the players who are attracted to the game, rather than the design goals. This is entirely anecdotal, but the group I used to play CP2020 with were primarily into the whole thing because they liked the idea of running around with an armoury equivalent to that of a small Central American state. They wanted to power game with big guns, and the whole atmosphere of CP2020 seemed to lend itself to that.

Part of what allowed them to play in that way was the rules, but I think the atmosphere of the setting and more importantly the initial impulse to play a big metal guy with a railgun had more to do with it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;263423Once again, it's not a banal insight simply because it's so often disregarded, especially on this website. The vast bulk of discussion about 4e on this website after 4e came out was wild, derogatory claims about how it was going to be played based solely on speculation about how it was designed and what the designers intended it to do. Very few people were dealing with the AP reports trickling in, and no one at any point clearly articulated the idea that people will play 4e in ways that are not fully encapsulated by the writings of Mike Mearls & co.

The term "culture of play" or "play culture" arose in contrast to the ubiquitous term "design culture" or "culture of design". It is intended to allow us to distinguish in our discussions between what we think the rules of a game (whether 4e or any other) intend and how the game is actually played.

Quite frankly I agree with you inasmuch as I'm apparently one of the few people in internet rpg-land who doesn't give a shit about system and design goals and just wants to play. (My criticisms of 4e, such as they are, are all to do with setting and philosophy.)

But I think the reaction against the "design culture" of 4e is a natural one, because in the months leading up to 4e's release we all had it rammed down our throats in posts on internet fora, blogs, and more importantly the WotC website. The talk was all about the wonderful design decisions the designers had made, how the game was all about allowing players to play in a certain way, and how much more streamlined and focused it all was in comparison to those silly older editions.

Quote from: noisms;263497Quite frankly I agree with you inasmuch as I'm apparently one of the few people in internet rpg-land who doesn't give a shit about system and design goals and just wants to play. (My criticisms of 4e, such as they are, are all to do with setting and philosophy.)

But I think the reaction against the "design culture" of 4e is a natural one, because in the months leading up to 4e's release we all had it rammed down our throats in posts on internet fora, blogs, and more importantly the WotC website. The talk was all about the wonderful design decisions the designers had made, how the game was all about allowing players to play in a certain way, and how much more streamlined and focused it all was in comparison to those silly older editions.

That's mainly because it hadn't been released yet, and there were only small amounts of information about the playtests. It's natural in an absence of testimony about play experiences to focus discussion on things that one can talk about. There wasn't much detailed information on the design of the game either until the 4e books were leaked.

It's important to point out that in what you describe above, you aren't reacting to the "design culture of 4e" so much as the marketing campaign for it. That's fine - I'm no great fan of advertising - but the design of 4e and its marketing campaign are very different things. If one has a problem with one of them, one should not confuse and conflate the two automatically.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;263601It's important to point out that in what you describe above, you aren't reacting to the "design culture of 4e" so much as the marketing campaign for it. That's fine - I'm no great fan of advertising - but the design of 4e and its marketing campaign are very different things. If one has a problem with one of them, one should not confuse and conflate the two automatically.

But the advertising was all about the design culture. So I'm not sure what your point is. Okay, we're reacting against what was said about the design culture, by the people who designed it. How is that functionally different from reacting against the design culture?

Quote from: noisms;263873But the advertising was all about the design culture. So I'm not sure what your point is. Okay, we're reacting against what was said about the design culture, by the people who designed it. How is that functionally different from reacting against the design culture?

The advertising was mostly nonexistent- in fact, you had to go the Wizards website and login to see any of it. I mean.. which specific piece of advertising are we tralking about being rammed down your throat? And where did you go to read it?

But the negative commentary was pretty much out of control. That started at the moment of the announcement, before there were any details given.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;263888But the negative commentary was pretty much out of control.

I'm pretty sure this says it all regarding over-identification.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;263888The advertising was mostly nonexistent- in fact, you had to go the Wizards website and login to see any of it. I mean.. which specific piece of advertising are we tralking about being rammed down your throat? And where did you go to read it?

But the negative commentary was pretty much out of control. That started at the moment of the announcement, before there were any details given.

Who said anything about it being rammed down anybody's throat? I just said that a heck of a lot of the advertising was to do with bigging-up the design culture of 4e and/or doing down the design of previous editions.

The negative commentary was hardly out of control. Most of the commentary was actually pretty positive both here and on the big purple. It's really only in a few threads that people were complaining. (Although I don't visit the WotC forums or some of the other bigger sites, so I can't say for sure.)

Quote from: noisms;263921Who said anything about it being rammed down anybody's throat? I just said that a heck of a lot of the advertising was to do with bigging-up the design culture of 4e and/or doing down the design of previous editions.

I would say it probably did at least some damage in the marketing to current players as well.

QuoteThe negative commentary was hardly out of control. Most of the commentary was actually pretty positive both here and on the big purple. It's really only in a few threads that people were complaining. (Although I don't visit the WotC forums or some of the other bigger sites, so I can't say for sure.)

I was pointing out some of the flaws, and more stridently than at acceptable levels, clearly.  I would say that some of the negative commentary and some of the positive commentary were less than reasoned, but those were the outliers, not the mean.

On the other hand, someone found a major exploit with the Ranger using just the 'leaked' documents, and Stalker0 demonstrated mathematically that the skill challenge system was doing exactly the opposite of what it was designed to do.  Flaws were demonstrated three days prior and about two weeks after the books were in stores.  I recall ENWorld threads that revolved around the skill challenge system in particular had extreme opinions on both sides.

I found most of the commentary to be quite positive as well.  It was occasionally tempered by mention of flaws, but in some cases it was as much blind positivism as the critiques were unthinking denigration.

The problems cropped up when the two extremes clashed, in my opinion.

Quote from: noisms;263873But the advertising was all about the design culture. So I'm not sure what your point is. Okay, we're reacting against what was said about the design culture, by the people who designed it. How is that functionally different from reacting against the design culture?

Much of the negative commentary on 4e hasn't gotten past the marketing, despite the game being out for months now. There has been a dismissal of actual play experience and the habits forming in the game's subculture and a focus instead on scrutinising every word that the designers write as if it was the final word on the subject.

This thread was originally Stormbringer fulminating about two blog posts Mike Mearls wrote about using some throw-away ideas he (Mearls) had about wandering monsters and using skill challenges to represent non-combat interactions with monsters. Stormbringer at no point asked if anyone was using wandering monsters or how, he simply launched into a harangue about how 4e doesn't have wandering monsters and why this makes it a piece of shit etc.

My group had a random encounter triggered by an unexpected level of involvement with a throw-away NPC last session. He's simply factually wrong that 4e doesn't have random encounters. It just doesn't have anything in the rulebooks mentioning them specifically. To repeat: He did not actually bother to ask anyone playing 4e if they were using random encounters or how they were using them. His commentary on 4e is simply uninformed ranting.

While not all critical commentary on 4e is such, there is a lot of commentary that is in a similar vein. I think that's because people are overly focused on how the game was designed, to the detriment of learning about how the game is being played.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;264088He's simply factually wrong that 4e doesn't have random encounters. It just doesn't have anything in the rulebooks mentioning them specifically.

Huh?

Quote from: Drohem;264098Huh?

4e doesn't say anything about wandering monsters and random encounters. In earlier editions of D&D, mention was often made of them in the corebooks (usually the DMG and MM, which had tables to roll on randomly to determine which monsters you would face). 4e doesn't really talk about that sort of stuff, and last I checked it didn't have the tables in the MM (I am willing to be wrong on these points about 4e, since they would undercut Stormy's argument anyhow).

On the other hand, when people are actually playing 4e, they have wandering monsters and random encounters in their sessions. Clearly people aren't just blindly following the rules, but are adding their own ideas and content (whether drawn from other games or editions of D&D, or elsewhere) to their game sessions.

Well, then Stormbringer wasn't factually incorrect about 4e.

Quote from: Drohem;264105Well, then Stormbringer wasn't factually incorrect about 4e.

Why?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;264110Why?

Do the 4e D&D RAW include wandering monsters/random encounters or not?

If it doesn't, then Stormbringer was correct.

Rather than following this debate about what is "in" 4e, I'd be more interested to know the procedures you used to introduce random encounters into play. For example, in older versions of D&D, the rules basically said to roll for a chance of an encounter occurring every X units of time, and if an encounter did occur, to roll on a table based on the locale. Some (maybe not all) editions also had procedures for determining how far away from the party the encountered creature(s)/person(s) would appear. There were also guidelines suggesting that rolls should be made more frequently under some circumstances (like if the party was fighting or otherwise making a lot of noise in a dungeon).

In practice, these rules are often roughly followed, with DMs opting to roll periodically without keeping strict track of time, and more often when the group is obviously dawdling. Published materials also provided examples demonstrating that DMs could/should customize their encounter tables based on the particular setting, or even tie certain "wandering" encounters to "keyed" creatures/persons. In the latter case it would be understood that a given encounter type was finite and could be "exhausted" at least within the framework of a single adventure.