Quote from: HaffrungNo doubt it is what the shrinking market of gearheads who WotC caters to want. But D&D is a narrower game in scope and potential than it once was, however smoothly the engine purrs.

Aw, I love it when you're stereotypical grognard.

Seanchai

Edit: Grammar

Quote from: TavisYou live in a happier world than me if you've never played with a DM whose ability to make D&D suck for all involved didn't call out for an immediate, preferably fatal, limiting of his possibilities.

So if you take a crap GM and put all these extra rules in limiting their GM powers, you create a good GM? Or at least an okay GM?

If we just find the right bunch of rules, we can all be wonderful GMs?

Could it be that it's better just to... talk to the GM? Maybe let the former GM play for a bit to learn what works well for the players? Failing that, find a new GM?

Quote from: TavisThe skirmish-miniatures fun looks to be even more impervious to the asshole behind the screen, and it may even protect you from the other players' attempts to suck.

Or perhaps the GM whose players think of them as "the asshole behind the screen" or that the other players suck ought to find some new players...

Perhaps a player who hates everyone else at the game table is going to find that no set of rules or style of play satisfies them.

Quote from: kregmosierignore most of the mandatory-minimum XP rules and encounter matrices and just wing it like when you were 14

If the only way to have fun with a game is to ignore most of its rules then you are probably better finding another game with rules you don't have to ignore. I mean, everyone ignores a few and house rules a few others, but there comes a point when you've warped it so much it'd be easier to play something else.

Also, it's good to have some tables to help us wing it. Dice and tables are good for inspiration. With this view, it's easier to have tables and randomness and then not use it than it is to have no tables and randomness and then try to use them. I mean, if you were playing AD&D1e you could not use the Random Harlot Table if you didn't like it, but if you were playing I dunno RuneQuest or something and didn't have a copy of AD&D1e then you wouldn't be able to come up with a Random Harlot Table on the spot.

The thing is, roleplaying is a social creative hobby. But most of us aren't supremely creative. You've got your guys like Doc Rotwang and S John Ross who obviously come up with some wild stuff on the spur of the moment, but most of us are pretty plodding by comparison. So we need stuff to inspire us, help us be creative. That stuff is things like setting books and forums and random tables.

Quote from: estarYeah but scrolls and books are there. So while he technically incorrect the treasure table will generate nonsense results for certain monsters.

Maybe the scrolls and books that mermaids have are made of seaweed, wood or metal.

Quote from: Serious PaulUhm, sorry I missed all that. I have no idea who he is, or why he's here. But that's all off topic, so I'll save it for some other day. Maybe when we have some beers or something when I visit Uruguay?

A little background. RPGPundit, or at least his internet persona (whatever malfunction is going on there), is knocked right out of the mould of the ilk of Jerry Falwell, the man Pundit took the time to dance on the grave of last year (you can read the repost of that over in RPGPundit's own forum, it was that important that he needed to post it again!)

He envisions these imaginary wars and paints himself as persicuted yet strong Papa figure that will win the day with truth and justice for all. Or some sort of bullshit like that. Wrapped up in that conspiracy theory of this imaginary war he has this imagined list of people that only show up here posting to undermine.  I'm on the list myself but I tend to kick in the nuts so hard he's stopped pointing at me. I think David R is on the list too, thought David is so measured and nice that it was probably hard for even Pundit to keep a straight face reeling off that accusation.

Keep on pointing out inconsistancies in his posts and you are likely to make the list too. Good luck!  It can be cathartic wacking him on the head. But he's not all that as he'll scuttle away when he's back into a corner where he might have to give up. But he just pops up in other thread pretending like he's still the people's undying hero. He's starting in on a real tear now, he's up to hammering on the "Swine" rhetoric and crap. He had been pretty tame for a while. Keeping off in his own little cage shaking an angry fist at the sky.

Quote from: estarPeople naturally ran all variations of the fantasy genre with it. My games were high politics that centered on my players winning their place in my Majestic Wilderlands, another friend of mine was about rising high level enough level to take on his "ultimate" dungeon, another was a wacky world where you would find the latest in 80's fantasy films thrown in.

But if they were using the rules, they still did these things with the same character choices, spells, magic items, monsters, etc., that I did. It's not much of setting, but saying, "There are wizards, Fireballs, mermaids, and +1 swords," is a bit of formalized setting.

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPunditBecause we all know who TonyLB is, and why he's here.

RPGPundit

Yes, clearly he is out to DESTROY GAMING.

You're a paranoid nut with delusions of grandeur.

-O

Quote from: TonyLBY'know ... if the new edition drives out one GM with twenty years of past play in them for every kid it recruits with twenty years of future play in them ... I'm actually okay with that.

I think it's likely to do no such thing, FWIW ... but if it did, that turnover wouldn't bug me.  Would it bug other folks?

I sense an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophesy moment. If you turn over the old players, used to more flexibility/less narrowing with new players who have no experience except with a more narrow game, you get the same number of players but now the population doesn't have the framework to understand a broader style of play.

Bingo - you've backed into the "There are N type of players each of whom have a specific agenda when playing..."

Quote from: HaffrungYep. You hear a lot about what's fun with playing 4E. Not so much about what's fun about DMing it. Sure, it's not as heavy as 3.x (which I couldn't stand DMing either). But adjudicating a tactical miniatures game doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I'm sure lots of existing DMs will play along because they're hardcores and they'd rather DM as a service than not play at all. But how are you going to get the kids who play MMOs to buy into the idea of GMing the fun for their friends if they don't get a creativity kick in the process? Or is the paradigm for 4E a bunch of aging and desperate DMs refereeing games for MMO newbies?

Nah - the ultimate paradigm for 4e has nothing to do with a GM at all. It's 5e where the GM is a computer program.

Things like the xp/treasure discussion make me all the more convinced - this is all about the designers being software designers.  Codify everything and you can do away with the GM.

Right Tavis?

Quote from: TonyLBNo, I don't think they're a "bad influence."  But I think that railing how stuff for kids must be bad because it isn't the same as it was when you were a kid is fundamentally ... well ... a geezer argument.  Kids want different things than we would want for them.  

Kids want to be told what they have to like by the Almighty Game Designers?
They want to be reduced as GMs to little more than Monopoly-bankers?
They want to play in a dry lifeless game where everything is plotted out from the start?

Or could that be what a certain group of people want for them, so that they can enjoy their own little ego trip of being brilliant Leaders of Men Who Must Be Obeyed?

QuoteI think old-school GMs have a lot of wisdom, and I hope that they'll get a chance to convey it.  But, realistically?  Asking your elders for advice is not an act that many kids cotton to these days.  And they sure aren't going to sit still for some old guy to tell them how they should discard their music/comics/RPGs in favor of the versions popular several decades earlier.

Really? Sorry, but last time I checked the GM-as-authority model continues to be the dominant popular model in RPGs.

Plus, my own experience of the kids is that what really pisses them off is adults telling them they "HAVE" to do things a certain way, and that what some corporate hack or pretentious twat tells them is "cool" is what they have to accept as "cool".

This model is set up for anyone other than "the kids". I'd have trouble imagining any creative intelligent teenager enjoying being the DM in this game... frankly, I'd have trouble seeing how anyone would want to be GM in this game, where the GM is basically powerless and led around with rope on his neck.

RPGPundit

Quote from: DwightWrapped up in that conspiracy theory of this imaginary war he has this imagined list of people that only show up here posting to undermine.  I'm on the list myself but I tend to kick in the nuts so hard he's stopped pointing at me.

Please.
Its more like when I've reduced one of my opponents to the point that he's incapable of doing anything more than blurting out personal insults at me with no substance at all, I consider that my work is basically done. I've obviously destroyed all of your actual arguments, such as they were, and now all you can do is fling poo, so there's nothing more to say to you.

RPGPundit

Quote from: James J SkachI sense an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophesy moment. If you turn over the old players, used to more flexibility/less narrowing with new players who have no experience except with a more narrow game, you get the same number of players but now the population doesn't have the framework to understand a broader style of play.

Bingo - you've backed into the "There are N type of players each of whom have a specific agenda when playing..."

You got it in one.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditPlease.
Its more like when I've reduced one of my opponents to the point that he's incapable of doing anything more than blurting out personal insults at me with no substance at all, I consider that my work is basically done. I've obviously destroyed all of your actual arguments, such as they were, and now all you can do is fling poo, so there's nothing more to say to you.

RPGPundit

Well yeah, I suppose if you didn't actually read the post you could assume that. Pulling shit out of your ass is a specialty of yours. Or maybe you just didn't have the guts to answer up to my proposal.

Retard.

Quote from: DwightWell yeah, I suppose if you didn't actually read the post you could assume that. Pulling shit out of your ass is a specialty of yours. Or maybe you just didn't have the guts to answer up to my proposal.

Retard.

What fucking proposal? Do you mean "if I humour you and cover off your latest lunacy are you going to STFU here, or at least put some effort in?"?  You call that a "proposal"? I call it a fucking joke. I've responded to your every pathetic argument, and now that you're whimpering in a corner like a fucking dog, you want to try to suggest that this is some kind of a legitimate challenge to me?

Look, its YOU who are hiding away from making an actual fucking argument here, shit for brains. The motive for you to attempt to do so is to try to demonstrate that anyone should give a fuck about you or what you think.

Over here, on my side of the debate, I have no particular stake in you actually making an argument. As far as I'm concerned you can keep whimpering in your corner slinging poo in recognition of the fact that you've actually got nothing of substance to say. Please, by all means, continue to do that, in case anyone didn't have that clear yet.

I've been making arguments the whole time, and will continue to make them.  If you really don't want to respond to them, that's your business, but like I said, you might be better served by shutting the fuck up completely in that case, since your every poo-slinging no-substance post just makes your utter intellectual bankruptcy all the more clear to everyone.

RPGPundit

Quote from: TavisBack in the day, a bad D&D game featured a ton of argument over rules calls. From AD&D onward, there's been a movement to reduce the degree of freedom the DM has in making rules calls. Gygax explicitly cited the need to standardize so you can have consistency in organized play under different GMs, which I think is also a driving motivation behind the 4e design.

No rules system is proof against an asshole DM. Give him the most airtight system in the world, and he'll just find other ways to fuck the players over.

Quote from: RPGPunditWhat fucking proposal? Do you mean "if I humour you and cover off your latest lunacy are you going to STFU here, or at least put some effort in?"? You call that a "proposal"? I call it a fucking joke.

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