Quote from: DwightYour mouth <-------------------------------------------------------------------> your money

WTF are you even on about you stupid cunt?!

How about this: you have two choices: you can shut up, or you can write stuff that is actually constructive.

If you have something to say about my description of storygames, say it.

Because right now, all that you're doing is intentionally disrupting this board; you've managed to disrupt TWO fucking threads with this latest little strategy of yours, which was of course your goal.

It stops, now. You post on topic, or not at all, or I consider you a disruption and deal with you accordingly.  When you manage to get a guy as nice as Jrients complaining about you in the admin forum, you know you must have joined a very exclusive club indeed: you're pretty well alone in that category along with spammers and Nox. That's the level of contribution you're providing here right now.

RPGPundit

You agree if I demonstrate how you are, once again, sucking slough water you STFU or otherwise stop poluting this forum. Seems like a great idea to me. But it smells like chicken in here...

Quote from: RPGPunditIt stops, now. You post on topic, or not at all, or I consider you a disruption and deal with you accordingly.

Woooooo, big bad admin pulls out his bat.  I'll take as an official that you don't have the guts to really stand behind your wildass spewing. But we all knew that anyway, right. Hell you've on more than one occasion shown the gaul to try rewrite the history to weasel out of what you've said in the past.

Retard.

Quote from: RPGPunditWhen you manage to get a guy as nice as Jrients complaining about you in the admin forum, you know you must have joined a very exclusive club indeed: you're pretty well alone in that category along with spammers and Nox. That's the level of contribution you're providing here right now.

Jrients complanied about Dwight in the admin forum ? Hell, sounds sinister, mods discussing posters behind their backs without said poster being able to defend himself. Did anyone stick up for Dwight ? Was your behaviour discussed too ? Like your bahaviour on this thread were you called Serious Paul a cunt for not using random tables. I assume this particular response on your part was fallout from another thread. Dwight was just answering a question about you, describing your online behaviour in a way many have done before.

He is going to get a chance to defend himself in his "public consultation" thread, right ? Let's see, Sett signals out a couple of posters - me included - in his weepy thread and suddenly Dwight gets targetted. WTF, aren't we free to speak our minds here ? And comparing him to that whackjob Nox? I mean has he really been disruptive to this board ? He been on topic in just about every thread he's participated in. Now you could accuse him of obtuseness - I wouldn't and I've been in more than my share of scraps with him -but is that a rules violation now ?

It's not as though he was like James M, who was responding and attacking you - you get what you put out, but that's another story - in every thread you participated in. So what's really going on here ?

Regards,
David R

Quote from: RPGPunditThe issue isn't about coherence, its about killing off 2/3rds of what D&D used to be able to do and be about, because certain people believe it should never have been that way in the first place.

How is limiting possibilities ever something that makes for a better game?

RPGPundit

Its been over 30 years.  We have the other games - they are still widely available in many forums and formats, and are still played by the people who prefer them.

Why the hell should a game company remain mired and chained to the past, and never try to evolve and grow the game?  Lack of change leads to stagnation.  Look at Palladium for a great example of what happens to a game company that remains stuck in the past with its head up its ass.  The core Rifts rules, and really, Rifts is the only game worth a damn Palladium still produces, where once it had a wide variety of popular games, haven't changed in DECADES.  And the fanbase is about the same size as it was when they lost all the licenses to Robotech and TMNT and everything, and became All Rifts all the time.

We HAVE the games you like already.  AD&D is there, waiting for you to pick it up again.  Why shouldn't we get something DIFFERENT.  Hell 3.5 is there already, and theres more options and adventures to be played there than I could get to in the almost 8+ years since it came out.

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?

Its only nothing more than a tactical mini game if you allow it to be, or indeed if thats where you force the game to go by inherent bias and closemindedness before you even open the books.

Quote from: kregmosierso, is it explicitly mentioned in one of these secret preview versions everyone else apparently is privy to that you can't...you know...just ignore most of the mandatory-minimum XP rules and encounter matrices and just wing it like when you were 14?  

Will kids not play in your game or think you're uncool?  i know the online canonistas would shit themselves, but really...who cares.

They're not really secret previews; they're right on WotC's website: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080514a

Anyway, my reaction to the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the subject is close to yours - those who don't like it can ignore it. It's good to have a concrete system for those who crave structure, those who don't want such structure would have come up with their own method of handling it on their own anyway.

When I ran 1e, I ignored a lot of apparently iron-bound rules - weapon speed factors and the way different weapons affected different armors being two that leap to mind. I suspect the same will occur here, with DMs calling an audible if the system as written doesn't work for them.

If they have internet access, they'll even have the ability to see that they aren't alone in wanting something different. There will likely be any number of fan-made modifications to this and other aspects of the game soon after its release.

I guess a bone of contention is that since this is an actual written part of the rules, that there will be players holding their DMs' feet to the fire if they don't follow RAW to the letter. Rules-lawyers have existed since as far back as the game has existed, and any number of methods have been developed for handling them - "this is how it works in my campaign" being one of the best, especially when delivered before the campaign begins. Those who object can try to compromise, not play, or play while stewing and complaining. Or maybe simply say to themselves "it's just a game; I'll just let it go and have fun." Pretty much like it's always been.

Quote from: TonyLBYou must not have played the same OD&D I did.

Even quite recently (to remove the whole "I was 12" factor) when we dusted off the red-book last GenCon, we ended up trying to overcome the deadly combination of goblin bow-men on an elevated balcony, plus a fiendish and unholy field of magical UNLIGHT (i.e. Darkness spell for which we had no Light counter left) that made crossing the intervening space a horrific and groping process.

All but one of us died, but the elf managed to escape, mangled and bleeding, with the magic sword that would ensure our village's eventual victory.  Our sacrifices were not in vain.  It was glorious, and all by the strict and unyielding letter of the rules.

Flavorless?  Not in my book.

None of that actually comes from the rules though.  It comes from the players.  If the players are not creative, or new and haven't thought things through, it just becomes "run in and swing-hit swing-hit" which is pretty flavorless.  The "groping and horrific" comes from the players buying into the DMs descriptions.  

The difference between the two, as Tavis has been saying, is that in 3.5, there were plenty of fun things to do if you were stuck for creativity.  In older versions, all the fun had to come from your creativity, cause the rules sure as hell weren't giving it to you.

That led to a wide variance in fun play.  I, for example, was always bored playing AD&D, at least in the moments we actually had to interact with the rules.  The roleplaying was great.  In 3.5 I have fun with the rules AND have fun roleplaying.  When I'm stuck for creativity, the rules give me lots of fun stuff to do without having to bend my brain for flowery descriptions.

4ed looks to be continuing that, by making the rules less of a bear to interact with, and more consistant across the board.

Quote from: DwightWoooooo, big bad admin pulls out his bat.  I'll take as an official that you don't have the guts to really stand behind your wildass spewing.

Dwight, please troll him by PM and not in rpg discussion threads.

Quote from: RPGPunditLike I said in my blog entry, the whole claim that "these tight-regulations are just for beginners, and you can just ignore them otherwise" is ringing more and more hollow every time, when these things are clearly essential parts of the entire system.

Yes, you could find a way to house rule them in a way that didn't utterly fuck up the game; but really, at every step of the previews they're showing more and more stuff that you'd need to houserule yourself, what's the point? Why the fuck would I want to go so far as having to write up my own treasure tables, because the fuckheads designing 4e decided that having random treasure tables was badwrongfun?

RPGPundit

Any more than you wanted to/had to write houserules for OD&D/AD&D because the rules were contradictory, bassackwards, or just simply nonexistant?

Quote from: HackmastergeneralAny more than you wanted to/had to write houserules for OD&D/AD&D because the rules were contradictory, bassackwards, or just simply nonexistant?

Holy cow, are you actually trying to tell me that you can take a structured game and houserule it less so, just as easy as you can take a less structured game and houserule it more so? Especially since it's just a game and most games of all stripes have been subject to such tinkering and finagling since we started to play for fun goodness knows how long ago?

Why do you hate gaming man, why!

D&D is all just a matter of taste and there are so many flavors, I simply don't see what all the fighting is about. It's not like there's some Messianic version of D&D out there that will save gaming and put a dice bag in every kid's pocket. Just pick and play what you love, and stop being a dick about it to everyone else.

You love the older stuff, that's awesome. The spontanaiety, randomness, and simplicity can be really fun. You love the newer stuff, that's great too. There is a lot of fun in tinkering with all of the bits and using them in game in new and unexpected ways.

Kudos, JamesV.

I never understood what all the fuss was about.  But then, I rarely understand Pundit when he goes off about gaming.

Quote from: James J SkachNah - the ultimate paradigm for 4e has nothing to do with a GM at all... Codify everything and you can do away with the GM.

Right Tavis?

Yes, 4e takes to an extreme an ongoing process of codification within D&D. If you check out the powers (i.e., what spells became in 4e) in the fan compilation of pre-release rules, it's clear that the design principle is to remove all cases where the power's effect is unclear. Which is to say, cases that require DM adjucation.  

No, I don't think it has to do with computer games per se, unless you're using that as a metaphor. I take the 4e design team at their word when they say their goal was to design a RPG.

To work from this idea of codification, what I'm saying is:
- This move towards codification has a long history in D&D, starting within Gygax's own custodianship of the game
- IMO people within D&D's development who work toward codification do so in part to reduce rules arguments, and in part to facilitate organized play
- Part of codification in D&D has been mechanizing player choices in combat
- If I'm not having fun in a combat-heavy convention game of an uncodified iteration of D&D, I think 'this is lame, I should be playing a skirmish miniatures game instead'. Same situation, in a codified edition: 'this is lame, it's just like a skirmish miniatures game'.

LOL@ this thread, and the idiots getting trolled in it.

Great to see pedophile-lovin' TonyLB back in action.

What's LB stand for? Little Boy?

FASERIP, that was completely unnecessary.  We don't need that incident dredged up just to score rhetorical points off of people.

Read the thread I linked to, Jeff.

His behavior is fucking disgusting there. And it's a necessary context to any post he makes here.

EDIT: Took back some nastiness. But that said, people ought to be reminded every chance they get whom they are dealing with.