Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 06:42:34 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on September 06, 2022, 02:35:31 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 01:07:41 PM
I'd ask the following: is there a A Magical Medieval Society Western Europe for 4e? What about downtime rules like PF or 5e?

I mean the amount of purist magical medieval Europes is absolutely miniscule in the scale of D&D before WOTC and the downtime rules in D&D have always been small snd vestigial. 5e and 3e especially so.

Pfs downtime rules also blow.

I was referring to the fact that MMSWE contains rules that allow you to mechanically buy/sell/trade all of that loot to the point of starting your own wagon train or trade routes. The downtime rules do the same for things like running a business or doing magical research.

4e doesn't have these types of things - and for those who are used to the extreme focus on having battlemaps because of how tactical 4e combat is, expecting cinematic theater of the mind noncombat activities is a big let down - to the point that many DMs or players just hand-wave it.

3e doesn't have those things either. At least not in core... wait, I forgot, you could make a profession check once a week to earn some silver pieces. That's it. How immersive.

Remember 3.x was billed as the "back to the dungeon" edition that stripped out all the stronghold and follower features from the classes and walled any followers or A henchmen behind a feat that was only allowed by GM permission. It's expectation from the adventure modules released for it was you'd go all the way to level 20 (and potentially beyond) as a murder hobo who used all your wealth by level gold pieces on items from the local magic mart not on some castle they didn't even have any rules for beyond a completely generic one in 3.5e and only covered in 3e in a rather thin softcover splatbook.

Regarding theatre of the mind, my table for years ran 4E entirely in theater of the mind; it's not hard at all... certainly no harder than for 3e despite 3e also insisting that you only play it using minis and maps (preferably D&D brand random box minis and battlemaps).

Yeah, sorry... selectively applying conditions to disqualify 4E as D&D that other editions also fail to meet isn't any sort of convincing argument.

Again, I'm not asking you to like 4E. I frankly consider most of TSR D&D to be a collection of awful gaming experiences I'd rather leave buried (the only OSR I'm interested in is 1e Palladium Fantasy), but I don't go around saying it's not real D&D because I didn't happen to like it.

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 06:42:34 PMI was referring to the fact that MMSWE contains rules that allow you to mechanically buy/sell/trade all of that loot to the point of starting your own wagon train or trade routes. The downtime rules do the same for things like running a business or doing magical research.

So is the core of the D&D experience trading and mercentile operations?

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 06:42:34 PM
I was referring to the fact that MMSWE contains rules that allow you to mechanically buy/sell/trade all of that loot to the point of starting your own wagon train or trade routes. The downtime rules do the same for things like running a business or doing magical research.

Flag on the play. I didn't realize what you were talking about at first, but MMSWE is a third party (non-WotC) product.

So, in essence you've just admitted that actual 3.x D&D never had these things in them, so 4E also not having them in its core either isn't a mark against it. It's just par for the course.

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 06, 2022, 08:06:07 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 06:42:34 PM
I was referring to the fact that MMSWE contains rules that allow you to mechanically buy/sell/trade all of that loot to the point of starting your own wagon train or trade routes. The downtime rules do the same for things like running a business or doing magical research.

Flag on the play. I didn't realize what you were talking about at first, but MMSWE is a third party (non-WotC) product.

So, in essence you've just admitted that actual 3.x D&D never had these things in them, so 4E also not having them in its core either isn't a mark against it. It's just par for the course.

Imma use my coach's challenge.  3pp OGL = compatible with 3.x and permitted by WotC to be marketed as such. Same with 5e. 4e *could* have but it chose to take its GSL ball home...

I would argue that since people were willing to generate 3.x 3pp to such a large extent (even if alot of it was terrible) it should be considered the best edition.

To be clear there can be arguments made as to why 4e was the most radical departure from 0-2e. But I have heard only very poor arguments for that by people thst don't actually read the system.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on September 06, 2022, 09:13:53 PM
To be clear there can be arguments made as to why 4e was the most radical departure from 0-2e. But I have heard only very poor arguments for that by people thst don't actually read the system.

  I would argue that of the three games WotC has produced under the brand, 4E is the most overt departure from TSR D&D. Whether it differs in actual play more than 3E or 5E is another question, but it certainly looks the most different at first glance.

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 08:39:46 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on September 06, 2022, 08:06:07 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on September 06, 2022, 06:42:34 PM
I was referring to the fact that MMSWE contains rules that allow you to mechanically buy/sell/trade all of that loot to the point of starting your own wagon train or trade routes. The downtime rules do the same for things like running a business or doing magical research.

Flag on the play. I didn't realize what you were talking about at first, but MMSWE is a third party (non-WotC) product.

So, in essence you've just admitted that actual 3.x D&D never had these things in them, so 4E also not having them in its core either isn't a mark against it. It's just par for the course.

Imma use my coach's challenge.  3pp OGL = compatible with 3.x and permitted by WotC to be marketed as such. Same with 5e. 4e *could* have but it chose to take its GSL ball home...

I would argue that since people were willing to generate 3.x 3pp to such a large extent (even if alot of it was terrible) it should be considered the best edition.

First, again, I am not arguing 4th Edition is best because that's going to be entirely subjective to the individual. I am merely arguing that 4th Edition is actually D&D whether you like that it is or not.

I would further argue that the nature of the OGL had far more to do with its wide adoption (including by people who had no business getting into the industry, but thought churning out a book they no longer needed to develop their own mechanics for would make them rich, only to be bankrupt in a year) than any particular love of 3rd Edition D&D. Of particular note is how few DM's would actually allow any third party material at their tables (vs. official WotC material which they at least presumed had a degree of balance with the rest of the official material).

But, if you think referencing every 3rd party supplement is a fair standard, then by all means let's compare it with the full body of 4E and it's 3rd party support (there was some; a particularly notable one being FourthCore that produced classic dungeon crawls with old school lethality and Hard Boiled Armies which adds mass combat rules). The most notable of these would be Dragon Magazine which was published in house during 4E and all its content made it into their character builders.

So that means 4E has castle/estate building rules, hirelings and henchmen, tournaments, themes and backgrounds (non-combat traits added to the characters), gladiatorial sports, organization rules (guilds/merchant houses) and so forth all in its official material. It also has "martial practices" for a variety on non-combat non-magical actions that can be learned outside the leveling system to further refine characters.

4E is also the first edition of D&D where you can establish a completely non-magical setting and run it without needing house rules to get around the lack of magical healing or adjusting the minorly magical classes so you aren't limited to all fighters and thieves (5e kinda can with its full heal ups and hit dice, but not nearly as smoothly)... so in terms of emulating a Robin Hood or other "real" Medieval European setting it's easily the one that needs the least futz (you have fighters, rangers, rogues, warlords, knights, slayers, scouts, hunters and at least some builds of the executioner, berserker and skald).

Add any of 4E's non-magical themes, castles, henchmen/hirelings, tourneys, guilds and mass combat onto it and you've a great high adventure non-magic Medieval Europe to play in with no house-ruling needed. That's one more definite plus for 4E in my book.

Eta: removed some unnecessary snark.

For what it's worth, when I responded to your question about how many non-combat systems you need, it was not intended to imply that 4th edition is not D&D.  I know that conversation was happening, and I agree with you that 4th is D&D (that's what it says on the tin) and I don't think that there's any special ingredient that defines D&D versus non-D&D.  I didn't play 4th but looked at it enough to be sure that I didn't see it as an improvement over 3rd edition, but that's not the same as saying it wasn't D&D. 

IMO, 4e and 5e are "D&D" in name only. This isn't to say that either game/"edition" doesn't have its merits, or that I wouldn't prefer the way that they handle some things, but rather that they're a radical departure from earlier "editions" of D&D in ways that almost no edition of other TTRPGs differ from their earlier editions, PF2 being the only exception I know about. They bear only superficial similarities to earlier games, such as having the same six ability scores, sharing many classes with equal names (that work completely different, except for HD types) and also being class & level games. But many of the core mechanics are completely different, other than ability score modifiers being figured the same way as 3e, and they do away with core elements that had been around since the OG game's inception, such as THATC0/Attack Bonuses and Saving Throw progressions, handling everything under a universal level-based modifier that applies to all rolls.

3e also made significant changes as well, almost teetering at the edge of being a different game. But many of those changes were cleaning up and streamlining many of the core elements of earlier editions. Attack Bonuses, for example, were basically an inverted THAC0, but mathematically were almost identical, just more intuitive to use. Saving Throws were mostly restructured into more simplified and intuitive groupings of "Special Defenses/Resistances" rather being based around a bunch of specific attack types or conditions, like Breath Weapons or Petrification. But the spirit of what they intended to represent, as well as a level-based progression was still there. Other stuff, like Skills and Feats, were mostly additions that gave more customization options, though, that is where the game begins to change compared to earlier games.

The case could be made that 3e is also D&D in name only, but there is enough overlap between it and earlier editions for it to be a weaker case. But with 4e and 5e if you changed the stat names and called the game something else you wouldn't know it was D&D. If you did the same to 3e, it would at least be recognizable as a splinter of D&D.

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 07, 2022, 10:34:27 AM
The case could be made that 3e is also D&D in name only, but there is enough overlap between it and earlier editions for it to be a weaker case. But with 4e and 5e if you changed the stat names and called the game something else you wouldn't know it was D&D. If you did the same to 3e, it would at least be recognizable as a splinter of D&D.

But this becomes a bit of a No True Scotsman argument.  If you define D&D as 'everything that says D&D published before 1998', then obviously 3rd, 4th and 5th edition wouldn't count.  I think a more inclusive definition is good - telling someone that they're NOT playing D&D because they're playing 5th edition is probably insulting.  I think it's fair to say what you think are 'sacred cows' for D&D and which editions you think are better/best because they meet those definitions, but it isn't fair to say that other people that value different aspects aren't playing D&D. 

D&D is a brand, like Coca-Cola is a brand.  Coke and Diet Coke are both versions of Coke - it's okay that they're basically NOTHING ALIKE.  They both say Coke on the bottle and as long as you know what you're getting, that's fine. 

Vision Storm,

You can only make that argument stick for 3E if you only consider 2E as the source material.  Because 3E is not a streamlined, cleaned up D&D in general, it is a (somewhat) cleaned up, (somewhat) streamlined version of 2E (including late 2E supplements).  Like all cleaned up, streamlined efforts done by people that don't fully appreciate what they are touching, it falls short in some new ways.

5E is far closer to BEMCI/RC than 3E could ever hope to be, and that's only on a cursory examination.  If you did deep into the way the rules actually work, you'll find little pieces of BEMCI/RC stuck into 5E in strange places.  Of course, what makes it not so obvious is that 5E is doing that same lifting from 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, and probably a bunch of their cousins as well.  It's the orbital pull of 4E mechanics and attitude that gives the other impression.  You could set all the defaults in 5E to be, say, 1E matching, and then make the corresponding optional rules for any of the 4E stuff, and you'ld get a very different impression. 

But really, the whole argument of what is and isn't D&D is silly.  Because it's more about how you run it at the table, than what the rules actually say, and what D&D is at the table varies, a lot.  When I ran 4E, it was D&D.  Doesn't matter that other people found that they couldn't run it as D&D.  At my table, it was clearly D&D.  The only real meaning in the phrase "not D&D" is more clearly, "more trouble than I want to put up with in order to run D&D at my table".  Which is a much narrower, subjective comment. 

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on September 06, 2022, 09:13:53 PM
To be clear there can be arguments made as to why 4e was the most radical departure from 0-2e. But I have heard only very poor arguments for that by people thst don't actually read the system.

Yep, starting with overly narrow and found new ways to be bloated.  The whole way that powers were written should have been considered a prototype that was thrown out, instead of releasing the game a year early when it wasn't ready. 

Of course, it didn't help that WotC completely screwed up the marketing and pitch for 4E out of the gate, not least because half the people working on it thought it was something different than what it was.  So we can't entirely blame people for taking them at their word.

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 09, 2022, 11:53:42 PM
If you were going to play a WOTC Edition, which one would it be?

For me, it would either be 3.0 or 5.0 Without Feats or Prestige Classes.  3.5 was just a rewrite of 3.0 with more pages to read.  Neither was perfect.

Probably going to need to don the fire suit, but Type IV. I've run two campaigns in it plus played in two. I had a blast all four times.

Fact is the last campaign broke up because a player died and his widow, another player, moved home to family. At the same time a third player returned to Germany (she was an exchange student). With 60% of my players gone in 4 weeks it collapsed.

The reason I liked it is I finally said, "Okay, this isn't D&D in terms of the expectations I've had since I bought Holmes. Let's see what it is." Once I did that I found a fun tactical game with some RPG elements.

If I want to play D&D as I expect I'd go to one of the B/X clones, either ones that add AD&D stuff to create the game I played circa 80-85 that I can "Intermediate D&D" or ACKs.

Every now and then I look at my 3.x books (including PF), but figure if I want that kind of customization I'll just play GURPS Dungeon Fantasy or Hero Fantasy.

So, yeah, of WotC: 4th Edition.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on September 07, 2022, 10:58:14 AM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on September 06, 2022, 09:13:53 PM
To be clear there can be arguments made as to why 4e was the most radical departure from 0-2e. But I have heard only very poor arguments for that by people thst don't actually read the system.

Yep, starting with overly narrow and found new ways to be bloated.  The whole way that powers were written should have been considered a prototype that was thrown out, instead of releasing the game a year early when it wasn't ready. 

Of course, it didn't help that WotC completely screwed up the marketing and pitch for 4E out of the gate, not least because half the people working on it thought it was something different than what it was.  So we can't entirely blame people for taking them at their word.

To be a little fair to WotC at the time, they were under the gun from Hasbro to release when they did ready or not.

Even as a fan of 4E, I agree it needed another year of polish (ex. by the release of the PHB2 9 months later they'd largely ironed out the controller role and gotten mechanics/fluff worked out for all the 3e base classes and races. By two years in they'd fixed the monster math/relative threat/solo monster issues, but too many had jumped ship by then).

Further, the market readiness for a new edition had only really reached the start of the Early Adopter range in 2008... another year of late 3.5e material and it probably would have reached General Adopter phase of product life cycles and, with all the expected races/classes available, would have probably gotten a lot less pushback.

The biggest self-inflicted wound though was, again, Hasbro, who thought they could maximize profits by bringing Dragon and Dungeon magazine in house and dropping the OGL for the GSL. Pathfinder was originally going to be Paizo's official 4E setting for the magazines and their adventure paths until Hasbro chopped them off at the knees and created their biggest competition with a built-in audience of all the non-early adopters (plus late adopters) not ready to make the switch.

The digital vaporware was just another nail in the coffin (the claim is the lead developer scrambled all the files and backups before he committed suicide a month before launch, but its easily as likely the development team never had a viable product and, when the lead committed suicide, him taking all the data with him was just a convenient excuse for their failure to deliver).

Throw in a financial collapse and recession in the fall of 2007 into 2008 just as the $150 package of three books released and you essentially have a perfect storm of events that, frankly, makes it rather amazing that 4E did as well as it did... particularly when Hasbro/WotC fired 90% of the design team who actually understood the system in their annual Christmas layoffs... leading to a massive shift in direction for the line that didn't please what fans it did have, while being too little too late to bring in or retain older fans.

4E is basically a master class in how NOT to release an RPG and that factors beyond the raw system materials can play as big a role in failure as the product itself.

Quote from: deadDMwalking on September 07, 2022, 10:45:17 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on September 07, 2022, 10:34:27 AM
The case could be made that 3e is also D&D in name only, but there is enough overlap between it and earlier editions for it to be a weaker case. But with 4e and 5e if you changed the stat names and called the game something else you wouldn't know it was D&D. If you did the same to 3e, it would at least be recognizable as a splinter of D&D.

But this becomes a bit of a No True Scotsman argument.  If you define D&D as 'everything that says D&D published before 1998', then obviously 3rd, 4th and 5th edition wouldn't count.  I think a more inclusive definition is good - telling someone that they're NOT playing D&D because they're playing 5th edition is probably insulting.  I think it's fair to say what you think are 'sacred cows' for D&D and which editions you think are better/best because they meet those definitions, but it isn't fair to say that other people that value different aspects aren't playing D&D. 

D&D is a brand, like Coca-Cola is a brand.  Coke and Diet Coke are both versions of Coke - it's okay that they're basically NOTHING ALIKE.  They both say Coke on the bottle and as long as you know what you're getting, that's fine.

Except that I'm not defining D&D as anything published before 1998, but anything that closely resembles those game engines, the same way that basically every single other TTRPG other than PF2 does when comparing it to earlier editions. Which as close as an objective measure as we can get. People's feelings don't figure into it. This is about whether the system resembles earlier editions or not.

Declaring that something is a thing because it says so on the label is like saying that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is democratic, a republic and cares what it's people think because it says so in the name. And Diet Coke is different from regular Coke, that's why it's called DIET Coke, rather than selling it to me and telling me that it's just "Coke", then crying to me about all the people who like Diet when I point out it isn't the same thing.