Quote from: Shazbot79;412515I still like the base 4E rules, but I'm personally sick of the splatbook treadmill and the bloated mass of feats and powers that come along with it...which is why I'm switching my game to Essentials and Essentials only.

Do you also think the moon is made of green cheese?  Seanchai seemed to imply that these two went together in another thread...

Quote from: Shazbot79;412515I still like the base 4E rules, but I'm personally sick of the splatbook treadmill and the bloated mass of feats and powers that come along with it...which is why I'm switching my game to Essentials and Essentials only.

Watch in two years time (ie. late-2012), 4E Essentials-only will be another huge bloated mess of feats, powers, classes, etc ...  :rolleyes:

Quote from: Bobloblah;412518Do you also think the moon is made of green cheese?  Seanchai seemed to imply that these two went together in another thread...

The two lines are compatible for the most part, but the Essentials line itself will be self-contained.

However, the new line does mark the new direction in class design henceforth.

Quote from: ggroy;412519Watch in two years time (ie. late-2012), 4E Essentials-only will be another huge bloated mess of feats, powers, classes, etc ...  :rolleyes:

Yep...it most certainly will.

Maybe in the coming years someone will come up with something I like better.

I thought Essentials was an 8-product evergreen line without any planned additions to that?

Quote from: StormBringer;412467...in the provocative posts department, so I present to you:

Feeling 4tigued

I got the link from my Tweeterer feed, and here are some pull quotes:

QuoteI think this starts with the most recent products. Essentials is giving the impression of D&D 4.5. Truth be told, I'm tired of fighting that perception because I'm starting to buy into it myself. It's not simply "Essentials = 4.5E" though. It's more "Rules Compendium as a repackaged rulebook featuring the truckton of errata we've compiled over 2 years feels very half-editionish."
My most tactically capable player, at the end of the night, stated flatly that he is really starting to dislike 4E and would really like to go back to 3.5. That's a bit of a shocker to me, considering he is really able to "game" the 4E system with his characters. He said he feels like he doesn't have the freedom to be creative and do things outside the "power" system in this edition, and I kind of understand his position.

This quote to me makes perfect sense. Both systems serve different purposes. In a way, 4e is more self-contained than 3.5. It's harder to build classes, paragon paths and all, but it does serve you with a ready-to-play tactical experience that is fine tuned to a specific game play. 3.5 if more fiddly, but you can play more with the game system, including playing with wacky elements, make up your own, expand on the system ad nauseam, and so on.

So it's no wonder to see someone driving intense pleasure from gaming the system get really effective in 4e, and at some point just wishing for a larger mechanical sandbox. It totally makes sense.

It's paradoxical. With 3.5, it seemed that at the same time it was being increasingly refined and polished with errata and new ideas, it was becoming less and less fun due to rules bloat. I'm the first to say that one doesn't have to use or allow to be used everything that is printed for the game, but a lot of the best material released for 3.5, especially near the end of its run, was flat-out improvements to the game. So, it was difficult to justify ignoring it all, while at the same time worrying about the game collapsing under its own weight. The same thing seems to be happening to 4e.

Something struck me in the linked-to blog. It's this:

QuoteI mentioned on Twitter that 4E feels a bit too "PCs Always Win" to me. Now it's not about "winning or losing" D&D that gets me. It's the lack of challenge so often. Granted, I'm a fairly "new" DM, having only been doing it since November 2009, so I tend to not be as forceful as I probably should. I possibly should have forced the dwarf out of the way in the interest of fairness. However, I got "gamed" and I let it happen to keep the game moving.

First and foremost, yeah, you're not being as forceful as you should be, especially if it seems to you, as DM, that the "PCs Always Win." As I've said over and over, I found it was amazingly easy as a 4e DM to wipe out a party of PCs. I was never the kind of "Killer DM" that is lampooned regularly in Knights of the Dinner Table, but I also seem to be tougher on PCs than a lot of more modern DMs.

I know that many people, especially around here, who started in the same era as I did will say they never had the type of adversarial relationship between players and DM that I experienced, but, y'know...Knights of the Dinner Table sure seems to have struck a chord with a lot of gamers, especially ones from the early-to-mid 1e era. I can't imagine that the "DM vs. PCs" relationship was all that rare back then. The game seemed to encourage it, I don't give a shit how much history gets revised.

My advice, and I know I will not get a lot of agreement here, is to beat the hell out of the PCs. TPK them if you can. You don't have to try that hard, and you don't even really have to do it deliberately. Just eyeball encounters rather than building them with the DDI tools. Stop worrying too much about whether they're balanced. 4e reminds me of 1e in a lot of ways, and one of the things 1e PCs learned pretty early on is that sometimes you gotta run. In the long run, it'll restore a sense of danger that is a big requirement for having fun with D&D.

It's weird. 4e seems to have provided a system almost perfectly suited for a "DM vs. PCs" type of game, yet at the same time there are tools and systems in place to keep it from happening.

Quote from: Tetsubo;412475But I have never understood the statement you made about 3.5. No rule makes it onto my gaming table without my permission as GM. Add all the rules and classes you want to, but not one of them will see use at my table unless I say it does. Is this an uncommon practice? Do most gamers just add new stuff in without any editing?

I shoulda finished it out, as it was implied in my mind.  The only 3.5 book I bought was the phb (used revised monster stats and prestige classes from SRD) because I could tell where it was headed.  When I run 3.5 (which isn't often any more) it's core plus house rules to model the campaign or core + 1 settting book, such as Eberron.  

WOTC tends to want the splats to be used so that they sell.  The really hardcore min/maxers tend to combine stuff from multiple books.  The munchkiny ones combine 3rd party with WOTC splat or stuff from two different 3rd party sources that were never meant to be combined.  These games give characters twice as powerful as core; those willing to buy hundreds of dollars in books and have nothing better to do than look at feats for days on end have a clear advantage over those who are actually interested in the campaign storyline.  Going core only nerfs that some.

Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;412506Yeah, fucking how so?  2007 and "early" 2008?  The core books didn't come out until June '08, dipshit.  They only leaked onto the net a little prior to that.

Yup, but "enthusiastic" reviews like this one came out a little bit earlier.

And one didn't even need to read it all. It only took gems like...

"At first glance there are a couple rule changes that will seem silly. The one that crawled up my craw the first session was the fact that diagonal movement counts as just one square. The idea that you could move faster diagonally than you could straight or side to side is retarded. But by the second session I didn't care. Why? No one EVER had to recount a movement"

...to understand that 4E was going to be the "Showgirls" of gaming: something so bad that they choose to blare its retardedness as the selling point.

BTW, almost every 4E debate I read is about the rules, but I seldom find someone criticizing the fluff - which is so retarded that it actually wanders in those territories that make the rules look smart. Cue the FR 4E.

Quote from: Reckall;412536BTW, almost every 4E debate I read is about the rules, but I seldom find someone criticizing the fluff - which is so retarded that it actually wanders in those territories that make the rules look smart. Cue the FR 4E.

I like 4E fluff. Not as much as mine, but I like it a hell of a lot better than 3rd Edition's Greyhawk fluff.  Don't give a shit about FR in any edition though.

What do you guys mean by "4e fluff"?

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;412530It's weird. 4e seems to have provided a system almost perfectly suited for a "DM vs. PCs" type of game, yet at the same time there are tools and systems in place to keep it from happening.

Well getting away from the controversial "4e is kinda like 1e" you were talking about, I'd say that I actually agree with that last sentence. There are a lot of good things in 4e that could play out really well with a 1e DM mindset. That's what I'm seeing right now when I look at Essentials D&D. But like you say, there's a whole set of tools and safeguards and let's face it, a whole gaming culture too surrounding them (balance uber alles etc) that sort of keeps that from happening.

There's a very, very good game in there, and it looks like it's trying to break free from the bullshit strangling it from all sides, without and within.

Quote from: Peregrin;412526I thought Essentials was an 8-product evergreen line without any planned additions to that?

I'd say this depends on how well it does...

Quote from: Shazbot79;412525Yep...it most certainly will.

Maybe in the coming years someone will come up with something I like better.

By the time the messy bloat is achieved, 5E D&D will be ready to be released.

If Mike Mearls' name is showing up less and less on upcoming D&D books/box sets/etc ..., most likely he is working on 5E D&D.  If history is any guide, it will take three years from start to release date of 5E D&D, if the system is very different from 4E.  On an accelerated schedule, who knows?  Maybe it will take them two years this time to crank out a 5E D&D?

Quote from: ggroy;412563By the time the messy bloat is achieved, 5E D&D will be ready to be released.

If Mike Mearls' name is showing up less and less on upcoming D&D books/box sets/etc ..., most likely he is working on 5E D&D.  If history is any guide, it will take three years from start to release date of 5E D&D, if the system is very different from 4E.  On an accelerated schedule, who knows?  Maybe it will take them two years this time to crank out a 5E D&D?

I think it will be slightly longer than that.

My theory is that 4E is a kind of beta test for 5th Edition. I mean, after two years of consumer feedback we see a major shift in design philosophy halfway through? Has that even happened with any other edition? I suspect that WotC won't begin work on 5th edition until the numbers are in on Essentials at the very least.

I would say however, that if you're correct we'll catch a little glimpse of proto-5E concepts later in the year when the Ravenloft RPG comes out, and the rumored Marvel Superheroes RPG.

Quote from: Shazbot79;412569I would say however, that if you're correct we'll catch a little glimpse of proto-5E concepts later in the year when the Ravenloft RPG comes out, and the rumored Marvel Superheroes RPG.

Or for that matter, Gamma World.

For example, the Gamma World stats are generated:

Primary stat = 18.  Secondary stat = 16.  Roll 3d6 for each of the rest of the stats.


For a one-trick-pony class (such as a rogue):  Primary stat = 20, roll 3d6 for each of the rest of the stats.