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So today on one of the Tabletop Facebook groups someone asked what Player's favourite retro clones are. I saw at least three replies citing Pathfinder with no trace of irony whatsoever. I guess Starfinder is an OSR game now? :D

Quote from: Krimson;902372So today on one of the Tabletop Facebook groups someone asked what Player's favourite retro clones are. I saw at least three replies citing Pathfinder with no trace of irony whatsoever. I guess Starfinder is an OSR game now? :D

The current edition of D&D is 5e, PF is a clone of 3.5, so yes, it is a retroclone:).

Quote from: AsenRG;902374The current edition of D&D is 5e, PF is a clone of 3.5, so yes, it is a retroclone:).

Hehehe, I chuckled. It's an interesting statement.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;902384Hehehe, I chuckled. It's an interesting statement.

I think what amused me most is that the people responding seem to have no idea what the OSR is so they just give the answer that makes sense to them.

Quote from: Krimson;902395I think what amused me most is that the people responding seem to have no idea what the OSR is so they just give the answer that makes sense to them.

It's because OSR isn't defined to the point that it leaves no room for misunderstandings. Exactly like everything else in this world. ;)

And I thought this thread was about W.O.I.N. (//www.woinrpg.com) ...

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;902433And I thought this thread was about W.O.I.N. (//www.woinrpg.com) ...

That RPG did look interesting, and I must have had the name in the back of my head from the Kickstarter. I never backed it though since I had no idea what the system was, and I try and regulate my spending on bookshelf filler.

Quote from: Krimson;902372So today on one of the Tabletop Facebook groups someone asked what Player's favourite retro clones are. I saw at least three replies citing Pathfinder with no trace of irony whatsoever. I guess Starfinder is an OSR game now? :D

Retro-clone does not = OSR. (but Id guess a huge portion is)

Pathfinder is a retroclone of 3/3.5e D&D. It came out in 2009 or so. So about 9 years after 3e and 6 after 3.5. Though if you count from "point of death" then 6 years after 3e ended and about 1 year after 3.5.

I never thought 3e was particularly "new school", it always seemed to me to be something of a bastard child of 2e and Rolemaster. Sure, ungainly and overly complex, but not particularly new, especially by 2000 standards (when it came out)

Quote from: JeremyR;902485I never thought 3e was particularly "new school", it always seemed to me to be something of a bastard child of 2e and Rolemaster. Sure, ungainly and overly complex, but not particularly new, especially by 2000 standards (when it came out)

Well, first, there's the question of what 'New School' is, or even if it exists as a single distinct philosophy. This is complicated by the fact that much of the early OSR defined itself in reaction against 3E ...

Quote from: Omega;902473Retro-clone does not = OSR. (but Id guess a huge portion is)

This. Pathfinder is quite clearly a retro-clone. It's a clone of a game that lost official support that was created in order to allow supplements for the game to be produced.

I probably wouldn't consider it OSR simply for the reason Armchair Gamer gives, but it's not something I feel strongly about. JeremyR is right in that anything "new" about 3.5 had already been done somewhere else 15-20 years earlier though.

Quote from: Krimson;902395I think what amused me most is that the people responding seem to have no idea what the OSR is so they just give the answer that makes sense to them.

Because there's no such thing.

Quote from: JeremyR;902485I never thought 3e was particularly "new school", it always seemed to me to be something of a bastard child of 2e and Rolemaster. Sure, ungainly and overly complex, but not particularly new, especially by 2000 standards (when it came out)

I still remember the words of one review/comment by a regular of usenet's r.g.f.a., "3e dragged AD&D kicking and screaming into the 90s"...

Old School: That which was standard practice (or what I thought to be "standard practice," or how people at my school gaming club played, anyway) when I discovered the hobby.

New School: Any way of doing things I encountered starting about 9-18 months later, most of which is crap.

Ancient History: Anything people did before I discovered the hobby, of which I will only begrudgingly acknowledge the existence if someone flashes me a publication date, most of which is crap.

Quote from: Baulderstone;902503JeremyR is right in that anything "new" about 3.5 had already been done somewhere else 15-20 years earlier though.

Very true, although I think it's important to point out that innovation (at least as far as I can tell) was never part of the intent. It was about reviving a floundering brand.

As for Pathfinder, it fits what retroclone means to the community ==> avenue by which new modules and supplements can be tacked on to a system that is no longer supported by the original producer.

Quote from: Baulderstone;902503JeremyR is right in that anything "new" about 3.5 had already been done somewhere else 15-20 years earlier though.

I remember having this exact conversation with someone in my university gaming club in 2000 who was banging on breathlessly about all this amazing new innovation in mechanics while I gently pointed out all the existing games that had done this years before.  It's not his fault; the number of roleplayers who are even aware that RPGs other than D&D exist is vanishingly small (albeit less small than it was).

Old school: that which is 20+ years old and/or gets a token mention on the Big Bang Theory, I guess.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;902513I still remember the words of one review/comment by a regular of usenet's r.g.f.a., "3e dragged AD&D kicking and screaming into the 90s"...

Yeah there was quite a few grognards who weren't happy that you couldn't eyeball conversions like you could with previous editions. That may be part of the appeal of 5e which is an edition that's closer to older editions while still being innovative.

Quote from: Krimson;902865Yeah there was quite a few grognards who weren't happy that you couldn't eyeball conversions like you could with previous editions. That may be part of the appeal of 5e which is an edition that's closer to older editions while still being innovative.

That was intended.

Quote from: Krimson;902865Yeah there was quite a few grognards who weren't happy that you couldn't eyeball conversions like you could with previous editions. That may be part of the appeal of 5e which is an edition that's closer to older editions while still being innovative.

Innovative? Bwa ha ha ha ha

Quote from: Matt;903349Innovative? Bwa ha ha ha ha

Innovations in 5E:

Backgrounds
Splitting classes into domains/schools/etc.
Choice between stat bumps or feats
Advantage/Disadvantage
Short Rest & Long Rest recovery
Attunement of magic items
Inspiration
Monster lair traits

Is 5E a cutting edge design that throws out the traditional template of D&D to offer something new to the RPG community? Nope. That was 4E. And anyone expecting WotC to make that bold of a jump again hasn't been paying attention. WotC listened to its customers, and most of its customers wanted streamlining, tweaks, and minor innovations to traditional D&D, not a ground-up redesign.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Innovations in 5E:

Gauntlet has been thrown! I'll will accept!

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Backgrounds

5e Backgrounds are the equivalent of portions of 2e kits segmented to be passive effects. 2e Kits did all of these things and more. I would say - not innovative.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Splitting classes into domains/schools/etc.

1e didn't need them. 2e had Kits that did the same. 3e did all of these things. 4e - let everyone do everything (we were drunk. We woke up). I would say - not innovative.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Choice between stat bumps or feats

This is true. But is it innovative? Ehhh - it's a big huge stretch for me to call it "innovative". But I'll cede it to you, since I'm feeling nice.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Advantage/Disadvantage

Definitely innovative. IT must be mentioned here that innovation should require context in terms of the rest of the system. This is an actual innovation.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Short Rest & Long Rest recovery

4e did it. In context with their system - they probably did it better. In 5e - it's vestigial. Not innovative.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Attunement of magic items

Innovative - barely. It's a nice new spin on item-slots to keep item acquistion bloat down. HOWERVER they dropped the ball in not just making scalable items...

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Inspiration

Innovative. Again, in context with their Advantage/Disadvantage rules and Bounded Accuracy.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Monster lair traits

Innovative. It's very cool. Though it's an obvious nod to non-D&D design (which is fine) - such as Fate/Fudge/Savage Worlds - which do things like this.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Is 5E a cutting edge design that throws out the traditional template of D&D to offer something new to the RPG community? Nope. That was 4E. And anyone expecting WotC to make that bold of a jump again hasn't been paying attention. WotC listened to its customers, and most of its customers wanted streamlining, tweaks, and minor innovations to traditional D&D, not a ground-up redesign.

I think the problem is that all they did was, in direct response to your 4e assertion, listen to what everyone from all editions wanted and came up with a synthesis, of sorts, of those editions rather than really coming up with a 5e D&D System that expresses itself in its own right. Instead with a few exceptions, in its current incarnation, it expresses itself THROUGH its older editions.

So "innovation" and "an existing idea that got added to D&D" are now interchangeable terms?

Advantage / Disadvantage is only innovative if we make believe Roll & Keep never existed.

The roll 2D20/keep highest was an alternative rule for weapon specialization in Mazes & Minotaurs years ago too.

But I'm an OSR fan so I don't give a shit about innovation. I just want a fun game.

Isn't item attunement an Earthdawn thing?

Yes. In order to use anything besides "common magical items" in Earthdawn (which are basically pieces of technology), you need to attach a magical astral thread between your Pattern and the Pattern of the item. Thus, these items are referred to as Thread Items or Legendary Thread Items ("Artifact" tier).

The Thread woven to connect the two Patterns has a Rank, and the item usually grants one ability per Thread Rank. One must have the "Key Knowledge" required to weave the next thread rank, which is a two part "riddle", with most items' Rank 1 Key Knowledge being "Find My Name and the Name of my Creator" (this "querstion" part of the riddle required sages to magically study the item's pattern, then the player must go off and find the info in the world). This spawns side-quests as players research their treasures, and sometimes a Deed is required before weaving the next Thread Rank (always tied into the item's story, like "Rank 5: Kill the Horror that destroyed the Item Creator's Town"). Then you make the Threadweaving test, and if successful you can spend Legend Points (XP) to increase the thread rank.

An example Thread Item (from Panda's Blog (http://pandagaminggrove.blogspot.com/2013/12/earthdawn-anatomy-of-thread-item-23.html), see the blog post for a more in-depth breakdown):

Spike Bomb
Spell Defense: 14
Legend Point Cost: Journeyman

Thread Rank One
Effect: May be used as a throwing weapon with the range of a dagger. The damage is a Willpower + 6 Effect Test against Mystic Armor. The wielder may make an immediate Willpower (8) Test to recreate the bomb. If unsuccessful, they may try again, taking 1 Strain for each retry.

Thread Rank Two
Effect: The Effect Step is now Willpower + 8.

Thread Rank Three
Effect: Compare the Attack Test result against the Physical Defense of all characters within 4 yards of the target. On a good result, the character is affected by the explosion.

Thread Rank Four
Effect: The range increases to that of a throwing dagger.

Thread Rank Five
Effect: The Effect Step is now Willpower + 10.

Thread Rank Six
Effect: The range increases to that of a flight dagger.

Thread Rank Seven
Effect: The Effect Step is now Willpower + 12.

I'm with Spinach.  I'll take a good blend of familiar, intuitive, simple and effective rules over mechanical innovation any day.  Mechanical innovation is like genetic mutation, more often than not it will kill the host or at least make it look funny (actually, I don't know the truth in that, but it sounds good).

Here's a meaningless conundrum. So if Pathfinder is a retroclone and 5e is not, and the OSR includes d&dish retroclones but generally defies clean definition, why is 5e more OSR-like than Pathfinder?

Quote from: Madprofessor;903435Here's a meaningless conundrum. So if Pathfinder is a retroclone and 5e is not, and the OSR includes d&dish retroclones but generally defies clean definition, why is 5e more OSR-like than Pathfinder?

  Because while the OSR can be ambiguous in spots, there are two things that tend to be constant:

  1. Gygax's original vision of D&D is the 'central pole' of the OSR; while exactly how distant you can get from that can be disputed, it seems that the closer you get to that pole, the more people will agree that what you have is 'old school'.
  2. 3.X is very much the 'antipodes' of the OSR; the OSR was conceived in large part as a reaction against many of the trends incorporated into or emerging from 3E.

  Since Pathfinder is very much the heir to 3.X, and 5E is trying harder to go back to Gygaxian D&D, then 5E is more OSR-like than Pathfinder.

I would say as of right now: 5e is only more OSR because it's not 3.x/PF.

But that's not saying much since it's OSR DNA is muted by all the other edition DNA floating around. The mechanical expressions of that OSR/Gygaxian spirit is... to keep with the metaphor - recessive in too many fundamental places.

Quote from: Madprofessor;903435I'm with Spinach.  I'll take a good blend of familiar, intuitive, simple and effective rules over mechanical innovation any day.  Mechanical innovation is like genetic mutation, more often than not it will kill the host or at least make it look funny (actually, I don't know the truth in that, but it sounds good).

And this is where you're wrong.  It sounds stupid, simply by how incorrect it is.

Innovation is when something comes along and changes the 'game' in a way that's beneficial to it's users.  In the world of Video Games, ONE such innovation was the jopypad, which is currently used by every single controller on the market, no matter what console or platform.

For D&D, it was the unification of it's mechanics and making them additive.  Doesn't matter if any other game system did the same, it was new and a good thing for D&D, because it cleaned up the mess that AD&D created.

Quote from: Madprofessor;903435Here's a meaningless conundrum. So if Pathfinder is a retroclone and 5e is not, and the OSR includes d&dish retroclones but generally defies clean definition, why is 5e more OSR-like than Pathfinder?

Because they want to exclude more people out of their little club house that don't agree with their personal gaming philosophies.  Which is pretty much what this label is meant for.  It's another "Us vs. Them" BS train careening through the rails of yet another edition war.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;903446Because while the OSR can be ambiguous in spots, there are two things that tend to be constant:

  1. Gygax's original vision of D&D is the 'central pole' of the OSR; while exactly how distant you can get from that can be disputed, it seems that the closer you get to that pole, the more people will agree that what you have is 'old school'.
  2. 3.X is very much the 'antipodes' of the OSR; the OSR was conceived in large part as a reaction against many of the trends incorporated into or emerging from 3E.

Which according to Gronan is 'Make shit up'.  So anything vaguely D&D, technically, is OSR by that definition.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;903446Since Pathfinder is very much the heir to 3.X, and 5E is trying harder to go back to Gygaxian D&D, then 5E is more OSR-like than Pathfinder.

How do you figure?  Both games are 'Here's some rules, go and make shit up.'  That makes them pretty much OSR, wouldn't they.  And so would 4e for that matter.  Huhn.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903461Because they want to exclude more people out of their little club house that don't agree with their personal gaming philosophies.  Which is pretty much what this label is meant for.  It's another "Us vs. Them" BS train careening through the rails of yet another edition war.

Dude, bitter much?  Ya know, I've been playing d&d for a long freakin time. And I am a huge fan and supporter of all the self-published work created by inspired fans that in my opinion is the essence of the OSR.  I don't belong to any club, I don't exclude people, and I regularly invite new people to play to spread the fun.  I have no idea who this "they" are that you refer to, nor do I believe your characterization of an entire community as a bunch of assholes helps inspire people to be inclusive. If there is a "war," it's pretty clear you're on the offensive.  Any comments I made were in the spirit of fun and light conversation.  Peace.

QuoteAnd this is where you're wrong.  It sounds stupid, simply by how incorrect it is.

Innovation is when something comes along and changes the 'game' in a way that's beneficial to it's users.  In the world of Video Games, ONE such innovation was the jopypad, which is currently used by every single controller on the market, no matter what console or platform.

For D&D, it was the unification of it's mechanics and making them additive.  Doesn't matter if any other game system did the same, it was new and a good thing for D&D, because it cleaned up the mess that AD&D created.

Well, I'm not going to get into a war with you but what I meant by innovation was new mechanics, not some recombination of old mechanics.  Nor do I see "beneficial" as a defining characteristic of innovation.  Most "new" ideas aren't really new, they're just repackaged or put in a different mix.  Of course there is room for refinement and improvement, but that's not really innovation.  Furthermore, it is my view, that most of the truly new ideas in the realm of game mechanics  have added very little to what we have had for decades. I happen to like the mess of AD&D, and regardless, organizing it into a unified whole is not an innovation, its just re-organization. I'm not trying to step on you, your game, or your ideas, nor did I go out of my way to call anybody "wrong," "stupid" and "incorrect." I have no idea why you came out of nowhere and tried to sucker punch me for offenses I did not commit.

...and yet again we discover that trying to define "What is OSR?" is a suckers game leading nowhere.

As far as I care, if a 5e player, a 13th Age player, a Pathfinder player and a DCC RPG player all want to call their games "OSR", that's perfectly peachy keen. If they want to argue with each other instead of having fun gaming, that's the lame part.

FOR ME, "Old School" is a play style, not a mechanic.

Quote from: Spinachcat;903467...and yet again we discover that trying to define "What is OSR?" is a suckers game leading nowhere.

Sheesh, I guess I found that out the hard way.

QuoteAs far as I care, if a 5e player, a 13th Age player, a Pathfinder player and a DCC RPG player all want to call their games "OSR", that's perfectly peachy keen. If they want to argue with each other instead of having fun gaming, that's the lame part.

Amen

QuoteFOR ME, "Old School" is a play style, not a mechanic.

Truth

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903461Because they want to exclude more people out of their little club house that don't agree with their personal gaming philosophies.  Which is pretty much what this label is meant for.  It's another "Us vs. Them" BS train careening through the rails of yet another edition war.

Yep man, you're the real, genuine, put-upon underdog here, raging against the horrible people of the world, who aren't kind and nice like you are.

QuoteAnd this is where you're wrong.  It sounds stupid, simply by how incorrect it is.

Oh, right.

Quote from: Spinachcat;903467...and yet again we discover that trying to define "What is OSR?" is a suckers game leading nowhere.

It's not. It's as simple as an attempt to define pretty much anything you want, what is, well, simple.

Forcing all other people to follow that definition... Now that'd make a splendid 13th Labour of Heracles. :D

Quote from: Spinachcat;903467...and yet again we discover that trying to define "What is OSR?" is a suckers game leading nowhere.

As far as I care, if a 5e player, a 13th Age player, a Pathfinder player and a DCC RPG player all want to call their games "OSR", that's perfectly peachy keen. If they want to argue with each other instead of having fun gaming, that's the lame part.

FOR ME, "Old School" is a play style, not a mechanic.

I generally agree with all of this. But then the real question for me is - "Does 5e make a good fit for "old school" in terms of play style?". My opinion is that one could say that it does, just as much as one could say it tries to be new-school with the fiddly-bits that "insist upon themselves" (SpinalTap FTW) . It's because of this second part - all those vestigial bits that I think 5e is falling short. It's trying to be both. And it feels WEIRD.

I can run it old-school, just fine. But then... it makes me wonder why I spent my money on 5e when I could have just gone 1e/2e and "houseruled" the shit out of those as needed. Why buy 5e at all, by that standard.

I'm assuming this is the implication of saying Old-School is a playstyle, not a mechanics thing. I'm operating off of my own corollary that nearly any game system can be "old schooled". The rubber hits the road for me as a GM in terms of "Is it fun?" (stipulated) and "Is this a lot of unnecessary work to do so?" That's where my claim that 5e isn't, by its mechanics and the conceits of the system, much less their apparent backtracking on their own conceits via Unearthed Arcana, old-school *enough*. Rather it's trying to be too much of it's older renditions via simplistic mechanical nods where it requires more weight.

I've always been a bit leery about retro-clones in that I find their attempts at being retro don't necessarily make them better than the originals - so why not just play the originals? Mind you - I'm talking about systems, not content. The same goes for 5e.

In this regard it makes defining what *are* the important elements of D&D that need to be preserved vs. set aside while defining itself as unique. This is precisely why I think defining what is the OSR is important for those that care about the OSR (I'm not one of those people).

And we should also remain open to the simple reality that opinions and tastes are perfectly free to change. My idea of Old School would have made 5e cleave closer to 1e with more options as a baseline. Might be a good thread on its own.

Quote from: Spinachcat;903467FOR ME, "Old School" is a play style, not a mechanic.

Some rules sets suit that style of play much more than others.  You could bludgeon a *world game into serving that play style by effectively rewriting the game piecemeal with house rules but why would you?

Quote from: tenbones;903567I can run it old-school, just fine. But then... it makes me wonder why I spent my money on 5e when I could have just gone 1e/2e and "houseruled" the shit out of those as needed. Why buy 5e at all, by that standard.

It's funny, but I'd been working on my own heavily houseruled version of D&D for years, initially using the 3E SRD and stripping it down, and then using B/X and adding options. Several years into this project, D&D Next came out, and I saw that WotC were pretty much publishing my houseruled D&D. Which made me happy. Much easier to buy a book than properly compile my 60+ pages of notes into a document useable by all my players, write up all the spells, etc.  

Here are what I consider the essential elements:

* No reliance on a grid. Easily playable in theatre of the mind.

* No reliance on character optimization or players studying feat trees, multi-classing, etc.

* More character options than B/X, but presented in a streamlined way. So no math to calculate skill points and buy them. Feats either optional or much simplified.

* A flatter power progression than 3x. No +15 to hit trying to hit creatures with 30 AC.

* No assumption that PCs buy magic items, wands of healing, etc.

* Typical combat takes less than 15 min.

5e meets all those requirements. I can convert and play an adventure like Caverns of Thracia with little effort. To me, 5e gives me an old-school approach with a few more options for players, but it's not a complex game at all. But then, I was never one of those old-schoolers who loathed WotC and everything they stood for with a blistering fury. To those guys, and the OSR is thick with them, anything introduced to D&D post WotC takeover is Abomination.

Quote from: Haffrung;903351Innovations in 5E:

Backgrounds
Splitting classes into domains/schools/etc.
Choice between stat bumps or feats
Advantage/Disadvantage
Short Rest & Long Rest recovery
Attunement of magic items
Inspiration
Monster lair traits

While "roll two dice and keep the better one" existed before, having advantage/disadvantage cover almost all the varying bonuses/penalties to hit seems innovative to me.

I'd also list:

• bounded accuracy
• casting spells of a given level as higher level (and thus removing redundant spells of different levels and at least some of the linear fighter, quadratic wizard issue)
• legendary actions (distinct from monster lair traits, I think)
• action/bonus action/reaction/related limitations (just about every previous RPG I played that had both two weapon fighting and the equivalent of extra attack allowed them to combine to give four attacks; 5e neatly avoided this by tying the two weapon additional attack to the bonus action, and generally seems to have avoided multiplying effects from separate features)
• concentration saving throws

but it may be that any of these existed in versions of D&D I didn't play or didn't play enough to recognize them.

It's easy to dismiss anything that ever existed in some game before as not innovative, but the innovation may be in making it all work together and still seem like D&D (or even more like D&D than some of the previous efforts).

Quote from: Haffrung;904079Here are what I consider the essential elements:

* No reliance on a grid. Easily playable in theatre of the mind.

* No reliance on character optimization or players studying feat trees, multi-classing, etc.

* More character options than B/X, but presented in a streamlined way. So no math to calculate skill points and buy them. Feats either optional or much simplified.

* A flatter power progression than 3x. No +15 to hit trying to hit creatures with 30 AC.

* No assumption that PCs buy magic items, wands of healing, etc.

* Typical combat takes less than 15 min.
.

Interesting. A lot of these fit Dungeon World, though I feel like purists would froth and spit fire before classifying DW as old school.

Quote from: Madprofessor;903435Here's a meaningless conundrum. So if Pathfinder is a retroclone and 5e is not, and the OSR includes d&dish retroclones but generally defies clean definition, why is 5e more OSR-like than Pathfinder?

There is no conundrum here at all. It's very simple. A retroclone is someone making a game that is a copy of an out-of print game. There may be a tweak here or there, but it plays 99% the same as the original. A good rule of thumb is that you can easily identify what game is being cloned. Labyrith Lord is a retroclone of D&D B/X, for example. They slipped in a couple of house rules, but its that same game.

Pathfinder is a retroclone of D&D 3.5. It's a pretty clear copy, and you can interchange materials between them. It's not OSR because 3.5 isn't OSR. It's the initial adversary that the OSR formed to oppose before 4E came to really rile them up. To use an extreme example, I could write a retroclone of Nobilis 1E, but I am pretty sure it would not be considered OSR. A retroclone is only as old school as the thing being cloned.

Quote from: rawma;904190...
but it may be that any of these existed in versions of D&D I didn't play or didn't play enough to recognize them.

It's easy to dismiss anything that ever existed in some game before as not innovative, but the innovation may be in making it all work together and still seem like D&D (or even more like D&D than some of the previous efforts).

Yes, innovation isn't about creating entirely new mechanics (which is almost impossible at this stage in game development). It's about using and combining existing mechanics in a new way.

Quote from: Haffrung;904079It's funny, but I'd been working on my own heavily houseruled version of D&D for years, initially using the 3E SRD and stripping it down, and then using B/X and adding options. Several years into this project, D&D Next came out, and I saw that WotC were pretty much publishing my houseruled D&D. Which made me happy. Much easier to buy a book than properly compile my 60+ pages of notes into a document useable by all my players, write up all the spells, etc.

You plan on putting that out as a shareable doc? I'm sure many of us would be interested in checking it out!  (i.e. and by that I mean pillage it like slathering Vikings wielding flaming katana-pickaxes to mine for their own use.)

Quote from: Haffrung;904079Here are what I consider the essential elements:

* No reliance on a grid. Easily playable in theatre of the mind.

* No reliance on character optimization or players studying feat trees, multi-classing, etc.

* More character options than B/X, but presented in a streamlined way. So no math to calculate skill points and buy them. Feats either optional or much simplified.

* A flatter power progression than 3x. No +15 to hit trying to hit creatures with 30 AC.

* No assumption that PCs buy magic items, wands of healing, etc.

* Typical combat takes less than 15 min.

I can stand by all of this. I think Talislanta's system qualifies for all of these things too. But it has very different conceit in that it tends to be a bit more lethal than D&D and it's not class based.

Quote from: Haffrung;9040795e meets all those requirements. I can convert and play an adventure like Caverns of Thracia with little effort. To me, 5e gives me an old-school approach with a few more options for players, but it's not a complex game at all. But then, I was never one of those old-schoolers who loathed WotC and everything they stood for with a blistering fury. To those guys, and the OSR is thick with them, anything introduced to D&D post WotC takeover is Abomination.

I'm certainly not one of them either. But I'm suspecting despite my best attempts to believe otherwise, that I'm not the one that WotC is designing D&D for. Because if they are, I think they need to nut-up and put some teeth into this thing and stop playing it safe.

Quote from: tenbones;904290You plan on putting that out as a shareable doc? I'm sure many of us would be interested in checking it out!  (i.e. and by that I mean pillage it like slathering Vikings wielding flaming katana-pickaxes to mine for their own use.)

Thanks for the interest, but it's just a bunch of notes scattered over several docs at this point, and I abandoned the project once I read the D&D Next playtest rules.

Quote from: tenbones;904290I can stand by all of this. I think Talislanta's system qualifies for all of these things too. But it has very different conceit in that it tends to be a bit more lethal than D&D and it's not class based.

I have the big blue book. Talislanta is on my short of games I'd like to run. But at this point, my group has very limited time to play and very little interest learning anything new. Some day...

Quote from: Baulderstone;904243There is no conundrum here at all. It's very simple. A retroclone is someone making a game that is a copy of an out-of print game. There may be a tweak here or there, but it plays 99% the same as the original. A good rule of thumb is that you can easily identify what game is being cloned. Labyrith Lord is a retroclone of D&D B/X, for example. They slipped in a couple of house rules, but its that same game.

So...  Sword and Wizardry is NOT a OSR game???  Is this what you're saying?  Cuz looking through it, there are some major changes to the system.  And 'slipping a couple of house rules' changes the game enough to not be a 'clone' by your definition.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904243Pathfinder is a retroclone of D&D 3.5. It's a pretty clear copy, and you can interchange materials between them. It's not OSR because 3.5 isn't OSR. It's the initial adversary that the OSR formed to oppose before 4E came to really rile them up. To use an extreme example, I could write a retroclone of Nobilis 1E, but I am pretty sure it would not be considered OSR. A retroclone is only as old school as the thing being cloned.

As someone who has the Pathfinder Corebook in my hand right now, and looking at a couple of major mechanical shake ups, like the CMB and CMD bonuses, which control things like grapples and wrestling, as well as changes to certain classes and other abilities (The Paladin's Smite feature is a massive theme, but not so much mechanical change, but Cleave working on HIT as opposed to on 0 HP is a pretty major one that actually allows Great Cleave to be viable) I would have to argue you're wrong.

Quote from: Haffrung;904279Yes, innovation isn't about creating entirely new mechanics (which is almost impossible at this stage in game development). It's about using and combining existing mechanics in a new way.

Which is exactly what I've been saying.

And I'm beginning to HATE the word.  It's meaningless now.

Quote from: tenbones;904290I'm certainly not one of them either. But I'm suspecting despite my best attempts to believe otherwise, that I'm not the one that WotC is designing D&D for. Because if they are, I think they need to nut-up and put some teeth into this thing and stop playing it safe.

I'm in the same boat, but I understand why WotC is playing it safe, given the backdraft they have gotten with each edition and change.

Quote from: Haffrung;904079But then, I was never one of those old-schoolers who loathed WotC and everything they stood for with a blistering fury. To those guys, and the OSR is thick with them, anything introduced to D&D post WotC takeover is Abomination.

An Abomination, I tell you! :mad: /shakes fist

PS: I share all of your desired elements, and quite a few RPGs fall into that same bandwidth you want. I just ditched 3e wholesale and shopped elsewhere as it was easier to get those elements at baseline faster. Conversion of content was always the biggest prep challenge over the years, though, so I know the struggle.

Quote from: Haffrung;904079But then, I was never one of those old-schoolers who loathed WotC and everything they stood for with a blistering fury. To those guys, and the OSR is thick with them, anything introduced to D&D post WotC takeover is Abomination.

It does seem to be the central tenet of the so-called OSR people, doesn't it?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904425It does seem to be the central tenet of the so-called OSR people, doesn't it?

I don't wanna turn this into an anti-OSR threadjack. I'm not against the idea of old-school anything. I got my old-school card. Been there, done it (a few times). What I could never quite get my head around when it came to the OSR is (and I fully admit it might just be me) - Basic D&D isn't very complicated, I never quite understood how houseruling Basic somehow became it's own "movement" that required all these other flavors of the OSR to justify the general contempt of all things non-OSR. I'm all for enjoying-the-shit out of your flavor of gaming. But I don't find it zero-sum in terms of gaming writ-large. It's just another brand of tribalism I find not particularly useful for discussion (but by all means enjoy your gaming).

Some might point at me and say I criticize 5e "too harshly" or imply I'm bitching about it "too much". I think I come off that way because I'm invested in nascent 5e both monetarily and as a gaming enthusiast/designer/player/GM in terms of what I want it to become. When I see it that its development is not going that way - well it loses my investment in various forms. This is true of any and all games I engage in. The folks, Chris, you're talking about in the OSR - I never got that attitude. Of course I'm not implying they're the only ones that do that. The 4e refugees are just as bad.

Coming full-circle - this, as much as anything else I've criticized 5e for, is *exactly* why I want 5e to stand on its own two feet instead of being this Edition-hodge-podge. Fish or cut bait.

Edit - Opaopajr is like the nihilist version of me. My SHADOW!!!!!! So dark. So dark!

Quote from: Willie the Duck;904408I'm in the same boat, but I understand why WotC is playing it safe, given the backdraft they have gotten with each edition and change.

  Not quite every edition, but most of them.

  3.0 was actually very well received, despite some grumblings. It wasn't until around 2002 or so that the holes in it started to become apparent.

  3.5 was another story, especially given how it launched early and crippled so much of the d20 market. I talked to Mike Mearls at my FLGS in late 2007, and he expressed some bafflement at how dramatically people had taken the division between it and 3.0. I suggested that it was partially because a lot of characters and almost all monsters were no longer 'rules legal' under the changes; I still think that's a large part of it.

   4E was the big reaction; I think that was due to launching a year or two before the market was ready, overestimating the audience's receptivity to changes because of how well 3.0 was received, and moving in directions directly opposite to trends that were building in the market. A lot of people will probably bring up the marketing, but I think that's more myth than fact--but the myth has grown into a 'narrative' that helped cripple a product that, while probably not well-suited to continuing the 'D&D legacy', was actually pretty good for what it was.

   But the reaction and narrative were so strong that I think WotC has swung to the other extreme and is now committed to ideas that parallel certain elements in the OSR--avoid any radical changes, strip out complexity wherever possible, conserve the 'D&D legacy', homage 1E at all costs. :)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904425It does seem to be the central tenet of the so-called OSR people, doesn't it?

Fandoms are defined not by what they love, but by what they hate.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;9044343.5 was another story, especially given how it launched early and crippled so much of the d20 market. I talked to Mike Mearls at my FLGS in late 2007, and he expressed some bafflement at how dramatically people had taken the division between it and 3.0. I suggested that it was partially because a lot of characters and almost all monsters were no longer 'rules legal' under the changes; I still think that's a large part of it.

I expect that Mearls, and a lot of other older gamers, didn't grasp how much fidelity to rules as written and to mathematical balance had become entrenched in the mind of the RPG hobby. He probably figured gamers could do what they had done 20 years before, and just convert on the fly and not sweat the small stuff.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;9044344E was the big reaction; I think that was due to launching a year or two before the market was ready, overestimating the audience's receptivity to changes because of how well 3.0 was received, and moving in directions directly opposite to trends that were building in the market. A lot of people will probably bring up the marketing, but I think that's more myth than fact--but the myth has grown into a 'narrative' that helped cripple a product that, while probably not well-suited to continuing the 'D&D legacy', was actually pretty good for what it was.

After learning and playing 4E for a year after it was discontinued, I came to the conclusion that WotC supported the game with adventures that were wholly unsuited to the system. 4E works when it presents a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure. However, the published adventures WotC rolled out for 4E were back-to-the-dungeon hackfests. They were actually quite good dungeons, and would be perfectly suitable for more combat-light D&D editions like AD&D or 5E. But they were a terrible grind with the 4E system.

And now that WotC has a system where you can run a combat in 10-15 minutes, they're back to story-driven adventures. Bizarrely, I find myself musing about converting 4E adventures like Thunderspire Labyrinth and Madness are Gardmore Abbey to 5E, while setting aside Out of the Abyss for a future 4E campaign. I don't understand how WotC can get its supported playstyle and published adventures so completely ass-backwards.

Lots of good stuff here...

Quote from: Haffrung;904466I expect that Mearls, and a lot of other older gamers, didn't grasp how much fidelity to rules as written and to mathematical balance had become entrenched in the mind of the RPG hobby. He probably figured gamers could do what they had done 20 years before, and just convert on the fly and not sweat the small stuff.

Mearls and I used to write for Dragon at the same time back in the day. We used to talk for hours on the phone about ideas and what we'd like to do with the system (3.x) - he'd already done a bunch of stuff for AEG, and I collaborated with him a couple of things. Curiously, I was a pretty hardcore PC-gamer (and still am) and I remember talking about how MMO mechanics seemed to breed this nit-picky number-crunching attitude that was creeping into D&D. At the time I was in charge of a raiding guild in WoW so it was second nature to me. But we seemed to be on the same page of wanting 3.x to have a more "cinematic heroic" feel for non-casters. Think "300" -style Spartans not anything we'd call "realistic". In some respects I think you're spot on with the first part. I think it hit him later that the mathematical scrutiny of PC-gaming invaded table-top. Because I will tell you, anecdotally, he and I both agreed that we wanted to see the power-mechanics skew higher for non-casters. One of the books that inspired me, and less so him - were the 5-level PrC's in Swashbuckling Adventures (7th Sea d20). By the context of the system, sure he math was way off. But who cares? The math was fucked from the get-go - having a 5-level PrC that shattered the rules for non-casters right in the sweet-spot of the mathematical curve for 3.x was fun!

When we both tried to push that in Dragon - we got neutered. I had a work/health issue and decided to drop out of game-design, and he went on and did Iron Heroes. While it wasn't mechanically what I would have done, it very much was in the spirit of what he'd been talking about with others including myself. I felt it went down a much more mechanically clunky path. When he went to WotC - and they dropped 4e... I was more than a bit surprised. It was everything I *didn't* want D&D to be... so it shocked me that it came out that way. Granted he wasn't calling the shots either.

Quote from: Haffrung;904466After learning and playing 4E for a year after it was discontinued, I came to the conclusion that WotC supported the game with adventures that were wholly unsuited to the system. 4E works when it presents a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure. However, the published adventures WotC rolled out for 4E were back-to-the-dungeon hackfests. They were actually quite good dungeons, and would be perfectly suitable for more combat-light D&D editions like AD&D or 5E. But they were a terrible grind with the 4E system.

And now that WotC has a system where you can run a combat in 10-15 minutes, they're back to story-driven adventures. Bizarrely, I find myself musing about converting 4E adventures like Thunderspire Labyrinth and Madness are Gardmore Abbey to 5E, while setting aside Out of the Abyss for a future 4E campaign. I don't understand how WotC can get its supported playstyle and published adventures so completely ass-backwards.

This. As much as I detested 4e, I was gifted a full set of 4e books. When 5e was about to launch, for kicks and giggles I decided to go through my 4e books and figure out what bits of lore I could mine to update the Realms to my tastes. And I realized many of the 4e adventures were not half-bad plot-point style mini-campaigns unto themselves. It took minimal work to make them sing for 5e. Don't get me wrong, I think the system (4e) is not very good for what I like to do, but the adventures were well suited for 5e. I'm happy to see you had the same experience. I love confirmation bias. heh.

Quote from: tenbones;904480This. As much as I detested 4e, I was gifted a full set of 4e books. When 5e was about to launch, for kicks and giggles I decided to go through my 4e books and figure out what bits of lore I could mine to update the Realms to my tastes. And I realized many of the 4e adventures were not half-bad plot-point style mini-campaigns unto themselves. It took minimal work to make them sing for 5e. Don't get me wrong, I think the system (4e) is not very good for what I like to do, but the adventures were well suited for 5e. I'm happy to see you had the same experience. I love confirmation bias. heh.

Many of 4Es adventures are far closer in tone and approach to TSR D&D than 3.x or Pathfinder's material is. The 4E Neverwinter Nights is one of the best sandbox campaigns ever published for D&D.  You could run Thunderspire Labyrinth as an intro to the D-Series without missing a beat. And if Gardmore Abbey was published back in 1982, it would be regarded today as an all-time classic dungeon. It really is a shame that many old-school gamers will not be exposed to those adventures because of their providence.

Quote from: tenbones;904432I don't wanna turn this into an anti-OSR threadjack. I'm not against the idea of old-school anything. I got my old-school card. Been there, done it (a few times). What I could never quite get my head around when it came to the OSR is (and I fully admit it might just be me) - Basic D&D isn't very complicated, I never quite understood how houseruling Basic somehow became it's own "movement" that required all these other flavors of the OSR to justify the general contempt of all things non-OSR. I'm all for enjoying-the-shit out of your flavor of gaming. But I don't find it zero-sum in terms of gaming writ-large. It's just another brand of tribalism I find not particularly useful for discussion (but by all means enjoy your gaming).

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that you don't see why the OSR has to go beyond "we like these things" and into the territory of "we hate this other things"?

If so, then the answer is that it has to do with the general state of D&D-related gaming discourse as it was around the time when WotCD&D launched and became a big thing. There was this undercurrent that 3E is the biggest, newest, bestest thing, and THEREFORE, anyone who played with older games or talked about their preference for such on forums had to be some sort of primitive retrograde caveman with objectively shit tastes, and who therefore deserved to be mocked, derided and abused in public, along with his shitty preference of inferior old shit. And this was tone of discourse at large, so no wonder those old-school players who participated in online discussions and the like eventually grew hostile to WotC fans. The future OSR violently and unfairly started that fight by hitting back.

Quote from: Premier;904487I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that you don't see why the OSR has to go beyond "we like these things" and into the territory of "we hate this other things"?

If so, then the answer is that it has to do with the general state of D&D-related gaming discourse as it was around the time when WotCD&D launched and became a big thing. There was this undercurrent that 3E is the biggest, newest, bestest thing, and THEREFORE, anyone who played with older games or talked about their preference for such on forums had to be some sort of primitive retrograde caveman with objectively shit tastes, and who therefore deserved to be mocked, derided and abused in public, along with his shitty preference of inferior old shit. And this was tone of discourse at large, so no wonder those old-school players who participated in online discussions and the like eventually grew hostile to WotC fans. The future OSR violently and unfairly started that fight by hitting back.

I get that... to a point. What I don't get is the persistence of it. To me it's apples and oranges the moment the editions changed, wtf is there to fight about in terms of which is better? The edition is dead, if you like it, stick with it. But you have to face up to the fact that it's dead. OSR aficiandos get the advantage of remaining almost evergreen by dint of the realities of their fanbase.

But at a certain point I see little reason to continue the axe-grinding. Of course I don't depend on my ego or income coming from my gaming habits... So it might be different for others in the trenches.

Quote from: Haffrung;9044664E works when it presents a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure.

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Are there any published adventures or campaigns that do match 4E's strengths, in your opinion?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;904434Not quite every edition, but most of them.

  3.0 was actually very well received, despite some grumblings. It wasn't until around 2002 or so that the holes in it started to become apparent.

  3.5 was another story, especially given how it launched early and crippled so much of the d20 market. I talked to Mike Mearls at my FLGS in late 2007, and he expressed some bafflement at how dramatically people had taken the division between it and 3.0. I suggested that it was partially because a lot of characters and almost all monsters were no longer 'rules legal' under the changes; I still think that's a large part of it.

   4E was the big reaction; I think that was due to launching a year or two before the market was ready, overestimating the audience's receptivity to changes because of how well 3.0 was received, and moving in directions directly opposite to trends that were building in the market. A lot of people will probably bring up the marketing, but I think that's more myth than fact--but the myth has grown into a 'narrative' that helped cripple a product that, while probably not well-suited to continuing the 'D&D legacy', was actually pretty good for what it was.

   But the reaction and narrative were so strong that I think WotC has swung to the other extreme and is now committed to ideas that parallel certain elements in the OSR--avoid any radical changes, strip out complexity wherever possible, conserve the 'D&D legacy', homage 1E at all costs. :)

Actually, the problem with 4e wasn't really the mechanics, it was two major factors:  The Internet and the OGL.  One thing that's been constant I've noticed just by faffing around the Internet is that people, especially us gamers absolutely despise change.  We will rail and rail against it and there was this major backlash between each edition, but because outside of conventions, it was mostly contained within small groups of players.  But most of them changed editions because they wanted to remain 'relevant'.

However, when the roll over to 4e happened, we now had a vehicle to actively resist change, the OGL.  Now, those who know a bit of law can tell you that rules can't be copyrighted, just the expression of them, but until the third edition, the layman gamer didn't know that.  But now they did, and Paizo, in a very shrewd and intelligent move, banked on that resentment that gamers have towards change.  And the internet exists, there was an easier way to resist the evil that is change, and get to as many like minded people on board with you.

If it weren't for those two things, 4e wouldn't have had as big a competition in the form of Pathfinder, nor would have the so-called OSR 'movement' built up any momentum past anything local, and more people would have played it, because they want to 'keep up with the times'.  Now they don't have to.

Quote from: Premier;904487I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that you don't see why the OSR has to go beyond "we like these things" and into the territory of "we hate this other things"?

If so, then the answer is that it has to do with the general state of D&D-related gaming discourse as it was around the time when WotCD&D launched and became a big thing. There was this undercurrent that 3E is the biggest, newest, bestest thing, and THEREFORE, anyone who played with older games or talked about their preference for such on forums had to be some sort of primitive retrograde caveman with objectively shit tastes, and who therefore deserved to be mocked, derided and abused in public, along with his shitty preference of inferior old shit. And this was tone of discourse at large, so no wonder those old-school players who participated in online discussions and the like eventually grew hostile to WotC fans. The future OSR violently and unfairly started that fight by hitting back.

Hrmmm. I never got this from WOTC. They were always very good about supporting 0D&D when 3.0 was released. Where I got this anti-osr attitude was from the 3e players, especially the organized play groups. When 3e came out,  I ran both 3e and 0d&D games.

In the fora though, the players attacked my 0D&D support. Did run some good games at small cons, in 2001, and 2002. 2003 only three players should up for my GenCon 0D&D game. After 3.5e and 4e were released just a couple years apart, attendance increased substantially for my old school games after 2006, because players at the gaming cons didn't want to get bogged down in 3-1/2 hour melees and encounters with lots of book lookups, and instead wanted fast moving games with more opportunities for each player to participate and shine, and not just at "Wack a Mole (Minion. monster...)".

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904381As someone who has the Pathfinder Corebook in my hand right now, and looking at a couple of major mechanical shake ups, like the CMB and CMD bonuses, which control things like grapples and wrestling, as well as changes to certain classes and other abilities (The Paladin's Smite feature is a massive theme, but not so much mechanical change, but Cleave working on HIT as opposed to on 0 HP is a pretty major one that actually allows Great Cleave to be viable) I would have to argue you're wrong.

First of all, nobody gives a crap about D&D grapple rules. Secondly, D&D BX and AD&D have always been considered broadly compatible, despite the fact that the classes work differently. I can't see any of these tiny issues getting the way of using a 3.5 adventure with Pathfinder rules or vice-versa.

It's like bitching about how you can't manage to run Keep on the Borderlands with Labyrinth Lord because Clerics get spells at first level.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904538First of all, nobody gives a crap about D&D grapple rules.

Now I DEFINITELY know you're wrong and just projecting at this point.  There are too many people who cared, because we had a lot of rules mangling to prevent wizards from wrestling down Purple Worms.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904538Secondly, D&D BX and AD&D have always been considered broadly compatible, despite the fact that the classes work differently.

By people who never played them together.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904538I can't see any of these tiny issues getting the way of using a 3.5 adventure with Pathfinder rules or vice-versa.

Then you've never tried, and believe me, there IS a fair amount of work involved to change things around to make them fit.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904538It's like bitching about how you can't manage to run Keep on the Borderlands with Labyrinth Lord because Clerics get spells at first level.

You've never had anyone do that?  Lucky you.

Quote from: GameDaddy;904516Hrmmm. I never got this from WOTC. They were always very good about supporting 0D&D when 3.0 was released. Where I got this anti-osr attitude was from the 3e players, especially the organized play groups.

*snip*

That's precisely what I'm talking about, the toxic gamer culture that sprung up with 3E. To clarify, I didn't say that WotC the company was the one to shit on older edition players, they're more business savvy than that.

Quote from: Premier;904593That's precisely what I'm talking about, the toxic gamer culture that sprung up with 3E. To clarify, I didn't say that WotC the company was the one to shit on older edition players, they're more business savvy than that.

Is it possible that the 'toxic gamer culture' was because 3e coincided with the Internet reaching critical mass? The influence of the internet on all kinds of debate has been to provide a space for people to be anonymously nasty that wasn't there before. Previously it would have been conversation, and letters to magazines (who would have binned letters that were both provocative and badly written) about a new version of D&D.

So not WOTC's fault, not aficionados of 3e fault (it was the version that got me back playing D&D after a long break playing other games), but an outpouring of gamer rage using a new medium. Possibly :)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904545By people who never played them together.

Well, I ran Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh for my nephews just last weekend using B/X rules and it went perfectly fine.

QuoteYou've never had anyone do that?  Lucky you.

It's not luck. I just don't game with assholes.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904605It's not luck. I just don't game with assholes.

It is amazing how many threads to which this can be a final answer.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904605Well, I ran Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh for my nephews just last weekend using B/X rules and it went perfectly fine.

God's Teeth, I love that module series to death.

U2 has some morality/usability problems, though.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904508Are there any published adventures or campaigns that do match 4E's strengths, in your opinion?

I had success using the Neverwinter Nights Campaign Setting. I whittled it down to about half the factions presented (you pretty much have to - could run six campaigns using that book), and ran a campaign of intrigue and exploration. Fights in sewers, ambushes by cultists, recovering a crown from an abandoned castle. Because each faction has a pretty good range of opponents, I could give the players a fair bit of leeway in what they wanted to pursue. Between each session I'd prepare 3-4 encounters based on what the party had said they wanted to do at the end of the last session. Then we'd play out 2-3 of the encounters. There was a lot of roleplaying and intrigue between each combat. It worked pretty well, but I did have to tailor things so the party would have to face a string of 2-3 encounters in a row to account for the whole AEDU action economy.

Another product I only scratched the potential with was the Threats of the Nentir Vale monster book. It's basically a bunch of monsters, gangs, factions, tribes, etc. that live in a geographical region. All sorts of cool background and story hooks. If you have any sort of experience with running your own campaign, you should have no problem stitching something together from the contents of this book. And since the encounters are mostly wilderness and urban, there's not reason for it to be a grindy dungeon-crawl.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904513Actually, the problem with 4e wasn't really the mechanics, it was two major factors:  The Internet and the OGL.  One thing that's been constant I've noticed just by faffing around the Internet is that people, especially us gamers absolutely despise change.  We will rail and rail against it and there was this major backlash between each edition, but because outside of conventions, it was mostly contained within small groups of players.  But most of them changed editions because they wanted to remain 'relevant'.

I think it's very generally true. But I also think it's missing something important that Haffrung alluded to - the proliferatin of mathematical optimization *as* a method of gameplay, which mutated into a form of One-True-Way for the predominately younger crowd just getting into table-top and the older crowd that simultaneously succumbed to this idea via MMO-gaming. While my evidence is anecdotal, I feel comfortable with it as an explanation as it happened to me and many others I know, though due to my experience in GMing for all these years I was probably more insulated from it. Marry that to the idea that you've cited where people don't like to change - consider that those coming into 4e have every bit of tribal mentality as any other edition-warrior tribe with their adherence to math-as-game and I think it's a fairly sturdy model (but not without flaw).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904513However, when the roll over to 4e happened, we now had a vehicle to actively resist change, the OGL.  Now, those who know a bit of law can tell you that rules can't be copyrighted, just the expression of them, but until the third edition, the layman gamer didn't know that.  But now they did, and Paizo, in a very shrewd and intelligent move, banked on that resentment that gamers have towards change.  And the internet exists, there was an easier way to resist the evil that is change, and get to as many like minded people on board with you.

Well I was working as a freelancer for Paizo when this change happened. I can tell you from personal experience it had less to do with Paizo "banking on resentment" than having almost no choice in the matter. With WotC pulling Dragon and Dungeon from them, and the fact that 4e at the time of their business cycle for Paizo hadn't made any official rules for third-party partnerships - going the route of Pathfinder was essentially their only choice, as far as it pertained to courting the D&D audience. It just happens that the resentment you're talking about was very real and they did profit tremendously over it - but I am about as sure as I can be that there was no real "intention" on Paizo's part about that.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904513If it weren't for those two things, 4e wouldn't have had as big a competition in the form of Pathfinder, nor would have the so-called OSR 'movement' built up any momentum past anything local, and more people would have played it, because they want to 'keep up with the times'.  Now they don't have to.

I would generally agree with this, though I think a lot of these things were circumstantial in the big picture, but it's a fair observation though I might disagree on a few piddly details. It'd be interesting to hear other viewpoints from those whose interests are on the other side of the fence (though I will say they are wrong and horrible baby-eating people) :)

Quote from: tenbones;904614I think it's very generally true. But I also think it's missing something important that Haffrung alluded to - the proliferatin of mathematical optimization *as* a method of gameplay, which mutated into a form of One-True-Way for the predominately younger crowd just getting into table-top and the older crowd that simultaneously succumbed to this idea via MMO-gaming. While my evidence is anecdotal, I feel comfortable with it as an explanation as it happened to me and many others I know, though due to my experience in GMing for all these years I was probably more insulated from it. Marry that to the idea that you've cited where people don't like to change - consider that those coming into 4e have every bit of tribal mentality as any other edition-warrior tribe with their adherence to math-as-game and I think it's a fairly sturdy model (but not without flaw).

Again, there was always a way to 'One True Way' in D&D.  The 'optimal' party structure is just one of the methods.  Min-maxing has always been around, it was the fact that people during the 3e era that had access to the Internet could now share these methods that it SEEMS.

Quote from: tenbones;904614Well I was working as a freelancer for Paizo when this change happened. I can tell you from personal experience it had less to do with Paizo "banking on resentment" than having almost no choice in the matter. With WotC pulling Dragon and Dungeon from them, and the fact that 4e at the time of their business cycle for Paizo hadn't made any official rules for third-party partnerships - going the route of Pathfinder was essentially their only choice, as far as it pertained to courting the D&D audience. It just happens that the resentment you're talking about was very real and they did profit tremendously over it - but I am about as sure as I can be that there was no real "intention" on Paizo's part about that.

Way I heard it, Paizo refused to renew the contract for Dungeon or Dragon because they didn't want to switch their adventure model to the newer edition.  And when I said 'banking on resentment', I realize that it comes off harsher than honestly intended.  What I meant was, Paizo had a means to keep their adventure subscription model going, because they knew about the backlash against the new edition (which at that time no one knew what it was going to be like, but already had formed their opinion of it.  Thank you internet.)

In the end, they still sold the 4e stuff on their storefront (their real profit maker) so there was never that antagonistic departure that everyone had assumed due to the 'pulling' of Dragon and Dungeon magazines.

Quote from: tenbones;904614I would generally agree with this, though I think a lot of these things were circumstantial in the big picture, but it's a fair observation though I might disagree on a few piddly details. It'd be interesting to hear other viewpoints from those whose interests are on the other side of the fence (though I will say they are wrong and horrible baby-eating people) :)

I don't hate what the OSR makes, I picked up Swords and Wizardry and bought Scarlet Heroes just a week or two ago, what I dislike how it divides gamers yet again into an 'Us vs. Them' camp, just like all the other edition wars.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904630Again, there was always a way to 'One True Way' in D&D.  The 'optimal' party structure is just one of the methods.  Min-maxing has always been around, it was the fact that people during the 3e era that had access to the Internet could now share these methods that it SEEMS.

    In fairness, WotC did their part to encourage it with the "Power Play" sidebars and stuff in Dragon at the time. Another factor, of course, was due to the unprecedented flexibility of 3E compared to other forms of D&D, combined with the idea of "balance through prerequisites" that made long-term planning of character development so essential.

QuoteWay I heard it, Paizo refused to renew the contract for Dungeon or Dragon because they didn't want to switch their adventure model to the newer edition.  And when I said 'banking on resentment', I realize that it comes off harsher than honestly intended.  What I meant was, Paizo had a means to keep their adventure subscription model going, because they knew about the backlash against the new edition (which at that time no one knew what it was going to be like, but already had formed their opinion of it.  Thank you internet.)

    I've always been under the impression that the cancellation came from WotC's side of things; they were pulling all their licenses in-house at the time, and the digital initiative was a key element of the plans for 4E. Look at the introduction to the Wizards Presents books, where they admit that the edition and the digital initiative were planned as a unit.

    Personally, I think it would have been worse in some ways if Paizo had kept the licenses, but that's because I see a dramatic philosophical difference. When they were running the magazines, Paizo appeared to have a tremendous focus on delving into all the obscure lore of D&D and bringing it together. 4th Edition's whole approach was doing a fresh start and taking a new look at all the old D&D tropes and sacred cows, and not being afraid to change or slaughter them if they didn't seem to work.

    I think you, Haffrung, and tenbones have made good points in this thread. I think the conclusion is that any 4th Edition that was launched when it was would have had an uphill struggle in the market, but making the game so overtly different, and not realizing how different it was in some ways (marketing, adventure design) further handicapped it. One other thing that I think hurt the game's reception, and that seems to be neglected, is how investment-heavy it felt combined with the timing. The game gave the impression of needing not only the massive core but D&D Insider and expensive miniatures and battlemaps as well, along with a continued string of prestige format supplements. If they'd launched it with books formatted like the Essentials line, it might have done better. And then, only a few months after launch of this prestige game, the bottom drops out of the world economy ...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904630Again, there was always a way to 'One True Way' in D&D.  The 'optimal' party structure is just one of the methods.  Min-maxing has always been around, it was the fact that people during the 3e era that had access to the Internet could now share these methods that it SEEMS.

No doubt mini-maxing has always been around. But it seems to me that the expectations of carefully calibrated balance was fostered in the 3E era. The notion that a party should have X number of encounters in and adventuring day, and they should present Y amount of challenge, and use Z amount of resources became orthodoxy in the 3E era, and then became foundation on which 4E was built. And 4E completed the transition from the dungeon being the core unit of design to the encounter being the core unit of design.

Basically, 4E took several design elements that were popular in 3E (though not ubiquitous) and made a game that made those elements mandatory and essential. What was not apparent to WotC was how many people who played 3.x weren't onboard with all those elements. How many played theatre of the mind, or didn't optimize characters, or wanted a lot of support of out-of-combat play. For old-schoolers who regarded 3.x. as a tolerable compromise, 4E was a bridge too far. For players who loved 3.x, it felt like a slap in the face (as all transitions to new editions feel to those who like the old edition - only now they had the internet as a forum for their displeasure). 4E really does offer a different experience from other editions. It's a very good game, but as was pointed out up-thread, gamers are conservative. Go too far with innovation and a lot of players feel as though you've rejected the things they already love.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;904636If they'd launched it with books formatted like the Essentials line, it might have done better. And then, only a few months after launch of this prestige game, the bottom drops out of the world economy ...

Absolutely. The traditional classes and the more accessible format of Essentials would have eased the transition tremendously. Simplified PC generation, cheap and user-friendly books, attractive POGs included with the DMG and MM. It's what worked to get me, an old grognard, into the game.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;904636I think you, Haffrung, and tenbones have made good points in this thread. I think the conclusion is that any 4th Edition that was launched when it was would have had an uphill struggle in the market, but making the game so overtly different, and not realizing how different it was in some ways (marketing, adventure design) further handicapped it. One other thing that I think hurt the game's reception, and that seems to be neglected, is how investment-heavy it felt combined with the timing. The game gave the impression of needing not only the massive core but D&D Insider and expensive miniatures and battlemaps as well, along with a continued string of prestige format supplements. If they'd launched it with books formatted like the Essentials line, it might have done better. And then, only a few months after launch of this prestige game, the bottom drops out of the world economy ...

That's the thing about 4e that I appreciate - they honestly tried to do something different. I just don't agree with what they came up with, it's not my thing. I will always tip my hat at the balls it took to go that route.

That kind of fearlessness is what I want in 5e. And I fully admit - it could still happen. I just don't think it's there yet. The vestigial 4e stuff in 5e holds it back, imo. It just sort of dangles out there as this obvious thing that doesn't belong. I fully recognize the economic realities that help drive some of the design decisions of D&D. It's unavoidable, but this is why I tend to believe my style of play will be on the losing end of the discussion, which is the interesting thing to me, because it's made me realize that D&D 5e isn't really "my go-to game anymore" and it made me feel okay with that.

I might homebrew it to death, maybe not. I'm cool with letting it sail on its own without me for now. I'll revisit it when more stuff has come out, but I'll keep my eye on it just the same. D&D will never be far from my bookshelf regardless.

Quote from: Haffrung;904613I had success using the Neverwinter Nights Campaign Setting. [...] Another product I only scratched the potential with was the Threats of the Nentir Vale monster book.

I guess what I was looking for was a drop-in module or adventure path that is structured the way you've described: a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure.

Like, that sounds like how Adventure Paths work.  And it's much easier to structure things that way, I would think, if everybody knows the plot is on rails and runs with it.  Do you think any of the Paizo APs would play to 4E's strengths?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904425It does seem to be the central tenet of the so-called OSR people, doesn't it?

i dont want to derail this thread ether as i do support the osr even if its not my thing but i would say so yes

Quote from: Haffrung;904466I expect that Mearls, and a lot of other older gamers, didn't grasp how much fidelity to rules as written and to mathematical balance had become entrenched in the mind of the RPG hobby. He probably figured gamers could do what they had done 20 years before, and just convert on the fly and not sweat the small stuff.



After learning and playing 4E for a year after it was discontinued, I came to the conclusion that WotC supported the game with adventures that were wholly unsuited to the system. 4E works when it presents a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure. However, the published adventures WotC rolled out for 4E were back-to-the-dungeon hackfests. They were actually quite good dungeons, and would be perfectly suitable for more combat-light D&D editions like AD&D or 5E. But they were a terrible grind with the 4E system.

And now that WotC has a system where you can run a combat in 10-15 minutes, they're back to story-driven adventures. Bizarrely, I find myself musing about converting 4E adventures like Thunderspire Labyrinth and Madness are Gardmore Abbey to 5E, while setting aside Out of the Abyss for a future 4E campaign. I don't understand how WotC can get its supported playstyle and published adventures so completely ass-backwards.

well the more complex the math and balance the harder it be comes to in the words of gronan "make shit up" and the math mathematical balance issue is one that i find particularly interesting as a lot of older gamers iv met that dont like 3.x usually sight caster dominance as a reason.
and i never played much 4e but did read on it when i got a chance and i did get the impression that wotc never under stood or figured out 4e was good at

Quote from: Premier;904487I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that you don't see why the OSR has to go beyond "we like these things" and into the territory of "we hate this other things"?

If so, then the answer is that it has to do with the general state of D&D-related gaming discourse as it was around the time when WotCD&D launched and became a big thing. There was this undercurrent that 3E is the biggest, newest, bestest thing, and THEREFORE, anyone who played with older games or talked about their preference for such on forums had to be some sort of primitive retrograde caveman with objectively shit tastes, and who therefore deserved to be mocked, derided and abused in public, along with his shitty preference of inferior old shit. And this was tone of discourse at large, so no wonder those old-school players who participated in online discussions and the like eventually grew hostile to WotC fans. The future OSR violently and unfairly started that fight by hitting back.

well i never had any thing against older editions of dnd and as a 3.5 fan what i found was that as soon as i said it wasn't my thing i got shit on for it by the "old school crowd"

Quote from: Baulderstone;904538First of all, nobody gives a crap about D&D grapple rules. Secondly, D&D BX and AD&D have always been considered broadly compatible, despite the fact that the classes work differently. I can't see any of these tiny issues getting the way of using a 3.5 adventure with Pathfinder rules or vice-versa.

It's like bitching about how you can't manage to run Keep on the Borderlands with Labyrinth Lord because Clerics get spells at first level.

bull it maters big time 3.5s grapple rule are a pain in the ass and pfs changes help big time as much as i like 3.5 its grapple rules are a huge weak point .
and as to 3.5 / pf compatibility its not easy  its complex enough that paizo had to make a conversion document to walk people through it

Quote from: tenbones;904646That's the thing about 4e that I appreciate - they honestly tried to do something different. I just don't agree with what they came up with, it's not my thing. I will always tip my hat at the balls it took to go that route.

That kind of fearlessness is what I want in 5e. And I fully admit - it could still happen. I just don't think it's there yet. The vestigial 4e stuff in 5e holds it back, imo. It just sort of dangles out there as this obvious thing that doesn't belong. I fully recognize the economic realities that help drive some of the design decisions of D&D. It's unavoidable, but this is why I tend to believe my style of play will be on the losing end of the discussion, which is the interesting thing to me, because it's made me realize that D&D 5e isn't really "my go-to game anymore" and it made me feel okay with that.

I might homebrew it to death, maybe not. I'm cool with letting it sail on its own without me for now. I'll revisit it when more stuff has come out, but I'll keep my eye on it just the same. D&D will never be far from my bookshelf regardless.

same

Quote from: Premier;904593That's precisely what I'm talking about, the toxic gamer culture that sprung up with 3E. To clarify, I didn't say that WotC the company was the one to shit on older edition players, they're more business savvy than that.

You think this started with 3E?  Gamers who swore by the OD&D supplements clashed with those who just wanted to run the White Box.  AD&D gamers clashed with OD&D gamers.  2nd edition AD&D players clashed with Expert and Basic D&D players.  We just hadn't had the Internet yet to make a lot of the screaming real time.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904659I guess what I was looking for was a drop-in module or adventure path that is structured the way you've described: a small number of climactic encounters. When it features a lot of narrative and role-play between combats, and makes combat the exclamation points of the adventure.

Like, that sounds like how Adventure Paths work.  And it's much easier to structure things that way, I would think, if everybody knows the plot is on rails and runs with it.  Do you think any of the Paizo APs would play to 4E's strengths?

I'm afraid nothing comes to mind. I've only read a few Paizo APs, and they included a lot of grinding to keep the XP distribution on track. You'd have to strip out a lot of the trash encounters - which may be the best way to go. I should mention that WotC adventures improved with the latter (Essentials) releases. The Reavers of Harkenwold from the DM's Kit could meet your needs.

Quote from: kosmos1214;904662i did get the impression that wotc never under stood or figured out 4e was good at

I feel WotC figured it out with Gamma World, but by then it was too late. Also, they made too many mistakes with Gamma World (the cards, the overt silliness), that they could not capitalize on how 4e GW did a great job bridging the "Let's Explore" talky-talk part of D&D with the "Hack & Slash with Minis" part of D&D.

And quite smartly, Paizo delivered almost exactly what 3.5 fans wanted and WotC continued to flop about.

In a couple years, somebody is gonna retro-whatever 4e. Hopefully, they will do a good job.

Quote from: Spinachcat;904669I feel WotC figured it out with Gamma World, but by then it was too late. Also, they made too many mistakes with Gamma World (the cards, the overt silliness), that they could not capitalize on how 4e GW did a great job bridging the "Let's Explore" talky-talk part of D&D with the "Hack & Slash with Minis" part of D&D.

And quite smartly, Paizo delivered almost exactly what 3.5 fans wanted and WotC continued to flop about.

In a couple years, somebody is gonna retro-whatever 4e. Hopefully, they will do a good job.

yahn its not a bad system it just needs some streamlining and some more control of its hp inflation

Quote from: daniel_ream;904608God's Teeth, I love that module series to death.

My nephews are into Scooby Doo and Pirates, so it went over pretty well.

Quote from: Ravenswing;904663You think this started with 3E?  Gamers who swore by the OD&D supplements clashed with those who just wanted to run the White Box.  AD&D gamers clashed with OD&D gamers.  2nd edition AD&D players clashed with Expert and Basic D&D players.  We just hadn't had the Internet yet to make a lot of the screaming real time.

That's exactly what I've been saying, the vitriol has ALWAYS been there, the Internet just makes it more obvious now.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904709That's exactly what I've been saying, the vitriol has ALWAYS been there, the Internet just makes it more obvious now.

yep i cant remember what thread it was on this very site where some one brought up seeing 2 guys come just short of blows over how to pronounce thac0
some time in the late 80s if i remember right

Quote from: kosmos1214;904712yep i cant remember what thread it was on this very site where some one brought up seeing 2 guys come just short of blows over how to pronounce thac0
some time in the late 80s if i remember right

Man, you want gaming vitriol, you should have seen the grognards playing Star Fleet Battles in the back of the FLGS I went to in the early '80s. One of my earliest gaming memories was those guys waving their three ring binders of rules at each other and having screaming arguments. That is when they weren't being of the dismissive of the damn kids with these newfangled RPGs that were ruining the purity of the wargaming scene.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904717Man, you want gaming vitriol, you should have seen the grognards playing Star Fleet Battles in the back of the FLGS I went to in the early '80s. One of my earliest gaming memories was those guys waving their three ring binders of rules at each other and having screaming arguments. That is when they weren't being of the dismissive of the damn kids with these newfangled RPGs that were ruining the purity of the wargaming scene.

ill buy it sounds legit

Quote from: Baulderstone;904717Man, you want gaming vitriol, you should have seen the grognards playing Star Fleet Battles in the back of the FLGS I went to in the early '80s. One of my earliest gaming memories was those guys waving their three ring binders of rules at each other and having screaming arguments. That is when they weren't being of the dismissive of the damn kids with these newfangled RPGs that were ruining the purity of the wargaming scene.

Have you ever heard one of them talk about Federation Commander?  It does things like getting rid of the energy allocation tax form in favor of on the fly allocation and has simpler SSDs for larger battles.  It's the end of the world.

All starship combat systems are Trafalgar, Jutland or Midway.  SFB is Trafalgar and it works great in that niche, one on one duels between capital ships.  I've seen attempts at middling sized taks force actions - never mind fleets.  The system can't handle it.  Fed Commander is just midway between SFB and F&E.

*Backs away slowly...*

Quote from: daniel_ream;904722All starship combat systems are Trafalgar, Jutland or Midway.  SFB is Trafalgar and it works great in that niche, one on one duels between capital ships.  I've seen attempts at middling sized taks force actions - never mind fleets.  The system can't handle it.  Fed Commander is just midway between SFB and F&E.

I was big into SFB back in the day.  Everyone wanted to do these huge games all the time.  We would play all damn day and not get anywhere close to finishing.  I and some others proposed several small games instead but everyone had to be together in one huge game that progressed at a glacial pace and was just getting interesting after eight hours of play when everyone had to leave.

Ever had anyone try the "F&E as a campaign game for SFB" model?  I think everybody had that idea in college.  My gaming club tried it once.  Once.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904729Ever had anyone try the "F&E as a campaign game for SFB" model?  I think everybody had that idea in college.  My gaming club tried it once.  Once.

Yeah.  We did that too.  Someone figured how long it would take playing SFB once a week and that was that.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;904636When they were running the magazines, Paizo appeared to have a tremendous focus on delving into all the obscure lore of D&D and bringing it together. 4th Edition's whole approach was doing a fresh start and taking a new look at all the old D&D tropes and sacred cows, and not being afraid to change or slaughter them if they didn't seem to work.

[...] I think the conclusion is that any 4th Edition that was launched when it was would have had an uphill struggle in the market, but making the game so overtly different, and not realizing how different it was in some ways (marketing, adventure design) further handicapped it. One other thing that I think hurt the game's reception, and that seems to be neglected, is how investment-heavy it felt combined with the timing. The game gave the impression of needing not only the massive core but D&D Insider and expensive miniatures and battlemaps as well, along with a continued string of prestige format supplements. If they'd launched it with books formatted like the Essentials line, it might have done better. And then, only a few months after launch of this prestige game, the bottom drops out of the world economy ...

Quote from: Haffrung;904642No doubt mini-maxing has always been around. But it seems to me that the expectations of carefully calibrated balance was fostered in the 3E era. The notion that a party should have X number of encounters in and adventuring day, and they should present Y amount of challenge, and use Z amount of resources became orthodoxy in the 3E era, and then became foundation on which 4E was built. And 4E completed the transition from the dungeon being the core unit of design to the encounter being the core unit of design.

Basically, 4E took several design elements that were popular in 3E (though not ubiquitous) and made a game that made those elements mandatory and essential. What was not apparent to WotC was how many people who played 3.x weren't onboard with all those elements. How many played theatre of the mind, or didn't optimize characters, or wanted a lot of support of out-of-combat play. For old-schoolers who regarded 3.x. as a tolerable compromise, 4E was a bridge too far. For players who loved 3.x, it felt like a slap in the face (as all transitions to new editions feel to those who like the old edition - only now they had the internet as a forum for their displeasure). 4E really does offer a different experience from other editions. [...]

Quote from: tenbones;904646That's the thing about 4e that I appreciate - they honestly tried to do something different. I just don't agree with what they came up with, it's not my thing. I will always tip my hat at the balls it took to go that route.

That kind of fearlessness is what I want in 5e. And I fully admit - it could still happen. I just don't think it's there yet. The vestigial 4e stuff in 5e holds it back, imo. It just sort of dangles out there as this obvious thing that doesn't belong. [...]

This goes back to my (now quite old) contestation that 4e was wholly mislabeled and all of this could have been avoided by better labeling for expectations, e.g. "D&D Tactics."

Now, there's plenty of design things I still don't like in 4e as a tactics game, particularly the combat time length and the assumed overhead of play-aids to best accomodate the widget pyrotechnics. But!, it was a brave -- and in my view, overdue -- direction for the game to explore narrative squad tactics gaming. So much could have been avoided if it was not passed off as the new updating substitution for what previous came before. And make no mistake with WotC's (Hasbro's?) marketing strategy -- defenestration of Dungeon and Dragon magazine, cutting off access to legacy .pdfs (even the free ones), misguided advertisement targeting, etc. -- it was geared up to be the new updating substitution. Actions do speak louder than words.

If I did "D&D Tactics" the 4e AEDU chassis would only show up during "boss fights" and that game would otherwise be pared down to almost BX levels for the rest of the adventure's sandbox dungeon exploration. (I also had issues with 4e's handling of Skills, Skill Challenges, Item Mathematical Dependence, Half Level Bonus Induced Challenge Inflation, and more. So let's just say most of the game wouldn't survive contact with my editing marker.)

The initial design sentiment was good, but that's as far as I can give that game.

Quote from: tenbones;904432Coming full-circle - this, as much as anything else I've criticized 5e for, is *exactly* why I want 5e to stand on its own two feet instead of being this Edition-hodge-podge. Fish or cut bait.

There's that timidity to recognize the mutual exclusivity now inherent between editions which I feared would strangle WotC's development of 5e's modularity. Look, I am an adult, if you're gonna make a 4e friendly splat variant within the 5e chassis, I'm all for that. I likely won't buy it or run it, but it bothers me none. But this fear to speak plainly and design boldly in support of the divergent editions is really starting to tick me off. Gutlessness is not an endearing trait.

The problem comes from trying to be all things to all people simultaneously and ending up being nothing to nobody routinely.

That isn't even isolated to WotC here, it's a humanity-wide problem that often ends with the abject lesson (because it often all ends in tears): choose your audience! Timing people, this isn't that fucking hard! And the aggravating thing here is this is about RPGs, like THE pre-eminent media where variation from table to table is not only anticipated, it's almost expected (except tournament style organized play). So the capacity to make this modular shouldn't be such an impossible task.

Instead we get an insistance of trying to have everyone play everything divergent on the same table. This is an exercise in courting disaster... and unnecessarily, too. A solid shared chassis for a toolbox of modular development shouldn't be this hard of a task. And there's nothing wrong with being explicit either, such as labeling certain optional widgets within new material as being "More Compatible with X Edition Playstyle!"

There's no risk in design. There's no courage in categorization. There's no equanimity in resource development.

Quote from: tenbones;904432Edit - Opaopajr is like the nihilist version of me. My SHADOW!!!!!! So dark. So dark!

We are the children of concrete and steel/
This is the place where the truth is concealed/
This is the time when the lie is revealed/
Everything is possible, but nothing is real

Living Colour - "Type"

Hi, how ya doin'!
:cool: /sips mimosa on patio overlooking piss-stained alley during the witching hour.

Quote from: Baulderstone;904717Man, you want gaming vitriol, you should have seen the grognards playing Star Fleet Battles in the back of the FLGS I went to in the early '80s. One of my earliest gaming memories was those guys waving their three ring binders of rules at each other and having screaming arguments. That is when they weren't being of the dismissive of the damn kids with these newfangled RPGs that were ruining the purity of the wargaming scene.

Oh, no kidding: it's why I stopped playing SFB and Squad Leader, an equally lovely game upon its initial release, screwed up with a similar problem of an incessant flow of new rules.  There weren't games after a time so much as they were hour-long arguments of "Well, I'm using rolling three-quarters' strength ESGs off of a pre-Y178 Lyran War Destroyer, so I should be able to foo fah bleh blee ..." / "No, I've got an existential blue crayon gun set to suicide overload with EM support from a Federation LC scout conversion, and it's a post-Y179 scenario, so you can't bleh blee, you hoser!"  Punctuated by much flipping through binders, and fist shaking.

Drop in panzerfausts and partisan commandos, and that's a fit for Squad Leader.

Fuck that.

Reading this thread, I have to wonder it WotC has its release of games in the right order. Looking back at the 3rd edition era, people seemed most impressed with that Star Wars Saga game. I never played it, but a lot of people tell me it was a solid refinement of the 3E system. Upthread, there was a comment saying that Gamma World was a 4E variant that fixed some of its problems.

Rather than bringing out new experimental forms D&D and then putting out other RPGs that gradually refine it, WotC might have been better off being more experimental with its non-D&D games, then bringing out a new D&D edition that is a refinement of those games. Using your prime house brand as the guinea pig just seems backwards to me.

I suppose part of the issue is that "one system to rule them all" philosophy that came in with 3E and D20. All games WotC made during the 3E era had to be a 3E variant to prove that it was the one true system, then all games of the 4E era had to be 4E variants.

They might be better off if they just went back to doing the TSR thing of letting their other games have their own systems. They can at least see how some new ideas work in the marketplace before putting them in their main product.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904767There's that timidity to recognize the mutual exclusivity now inherent between editions which I feared would strangle WotC's development of 5e's modularity. Look, I am an adult, if you're gonna make a 4e friendly splat variant within the 5e chassis, I'm all for that. I likely won't buy it or run it, but it bothers me none. But this fear to speak plainly and design boldly in support of the divergent editions is really starting to tick me off. Gutlessness is not an endearing trait.

The problem comes from trying to be all things to all people simultaneously and ending up being nothing to nobody routinely.

That isn't even isolated to WotC here, it's a humanity-wide problem that often ends with the abject lesson (because it often all ends in tears): choose your audience! Timing people, this isn't that fucking hard! And the aggravating thing here is this is about RPGs, like THE pre-eminent media where variation from table to table is not only anticipated, it's almost expected (except tournament style organized play). So the capacity to make this modular shouldn't be such an impossible task.

Instead we get an insistance of trying to have everyone play everything divergent on the same table. This is an exercise in courting disaster... and unnecessarily, too. A solid shared chassis for a toolbox of modular development shouldn't be this hard of a task. And there's nothing wrong with being explicit either, such as labeling certain optional widgets within new material as being "More Compatible with X Edition Playstyle!"

5E has been quite successful and well received. It certainly doesn't look like a mistake, let alone a disaster. Maybe it hasn't set the online RPG-theory crowd on fire, but as a game played at the table it works just fine. It allows people to make stories and adventures using mechanics that are familiar to long-time players, but which have been freshened up with some modern features. I don't see why D&D has to be any more than that. This isn't high art here. It's just a game. I doubt more than a fraction or RPGers give a toss about boldness and innovation.

As for modularity, the problems is WotC has cut the resources for D&D to the bone after disappointing results from 4E. Does the development team even have time to draft and test new sub-systems and options?

And when it comes down to it, at the table the mechanics don't really matter all that much to most players. As long as they don't get in the way people can play a D&D campaign based on tactical combat, or a focussed on intrigue and roleplaying, or dungeon exploration, all using the same system. You don't need special mechanics beyond what 5E already offers to support any of those playstyles.

Quote from: tenbones;904646That kind of fearlessness is what I want in 5e. And I fully admit - it could still happen.

Given how well 5th edition is apparently selling, you're one of the rare few who want change.  So it's not going to happen.  Players have spoken and they're not budging.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904813Given how well 5th edition is apparently selling, you're one of the rare few who want change.  So it's not going to happen.  Players have spoken and they're not budging.

So this is how I look at it... Take it with a grain (or cow-lick sized block) of salt.

People change.

My long-view theory is that most of the folks that got introduced to 3e were likely new players, or lapsed players coming back into the game. 3.x ran its course split into PF and then they dropped 4e. Coupled with the "gamey" mindset that was influenced by MMO's, I might even toss in some influence from boardgames, it's created a different breed of player. Essentially, as has been pointed out in many threads, it's an effectively fractured playerbase based around a singular franchise.

But I'm a believer that there is a process in tabletop that gamers go through over the long haul. You go through phases of min-maxing, Monty Hauling, then tons of RP, and sandboxing, and you might have some debaucherous dalliances with narrative gaming (you degenerate!!) and then you get into the weird shit that borders on narrative boardgaming... at some point you have a blowout. Then you go back to where you had the most fun. That might take you into the OSR, or some other stable position where you feel you can do any or all of these things in bits or pieces without having to sacrifice the fun you're looking for.

For me - it's bog-standard sandbox play with elements of "themepark" as needed, but the PC's are in deep in the mix. It's a simply syncretic style that I'm confident that no one on this forum would find objectionable (worth fighting over). So I'm not too worried about having to come around to 5e. I think it might be that 5e will come around to me - or not.  While it might not be my cuppa right now - I certainly like it more than 3.x/4e and it's got room to grow. And that's okay with me!

Because just like people change - so do games. And there's a *lot* of good games out there these days. But I'll always honor D&D. Always.

Quote from: tenbones;904820So this is how I look at it... Take it with a grain (or cow-lick sized block) of salt.

People change.

Yes, when they feel they don't have a choice, or don't notice.  In terms of gaming, this is why people went from one edition to another, they felt that if they wanted to play 'D&D' they had to go to a new edition (minus the few holdouts that would cling to their game, sometimes desperately.)  This is why why 4e failed miserably.  Suddenly there was a choice, and a good chunk of players resisted it, both vocally and monetarily.  5th edition is WoTC realizing that even if there are players who claim to want to rock the boat, they don't really.

Quote from: Ravenswing;904771Oh, no kidding: it's why I stopped playing SFB and Squad Leader, an equally lovely game upon its initial release, screwed up with a similar problem of an incessant flow of new rules.  

Have you tried Combat commander (http://www.gmtgames.com/p-455-combat-commander-europe-2014-reprint.aspx) from GMT Games?  It's a squad level WWII game that feels very like a simplified, streamlined, less arcane spiritual successor to Squad Leader with GMT adding their own twist.  It gives a lot of the feel of Squad Leader without the nitpickery, fiddly turn order mechanics and general cruft that built up in Squad Leader over time.
Review
[video=youtube;Q7LV890hz2Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7LV890hz2Y[/youtube]
It uses a lot of simple yet clever tricks to simplify things and streamline play.  Stacking limits are done by simply counting the number of people depicted on the chit.  Heavy weapons chits are slightly smaller and designed to be placed offset so you can see the unit's stats and the weapon's adjustment without picking the chit up.  GMT's wrinkle is that it is card driven rather than dice and chart driven.  GMT likes card driven mechanics and uses them in a lot of their games.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904840Yes, when they feel they don't have a choice, or don't notice.  In terms of gaming, this is why people went from one edition to another, they felt that if they wanted to play 'D&D' they had to go to a new edition (minus the few holdouts that would cling to their game, sometimes desperately.)  This is why why 4e failed miserably.  Suddenly there was a choice, and a good chunk of players resisted it, both vocally and monetarily.  5th edition is WoTC realizing that even if there are players who claim to want to rock the boat, they don't really.

Yeah exactly! But there is a bit of maturity (that I fully concede seems to be missing in the tabletop community based on a lot of these discussions) that is required to be able to "let it go" and be happy with what you got.

I'm willing to believe Mearls and Co. that they believed they could thread this needle of making 5e all things to all players of all editions. Taken that as a starting point (and ending point) perhaps they largely succeeded from that perspective. But is it good? I think the jury is still out on whether it is going to be this gigantic "success" in that regard. There is a mechanical focus that is lost *because* of the original premise of "being all things to all people" which seems to be novel to people that didn't get to do the 1e/2e thing or did but forgot about it as they descended into 3.x/4e. I'm sure they'll figure it all out, one way or another. In the meantime it appears I'm sitting this one out for now.

Quote from: tenbones;904820So this is how I look at it... Take it with a grain (or cow-lick sized block) of salt.

People change.

My long-view theory is that most of the folks that got introduced to 3e were likely new players, or lapsed players coming back into the game. 3.x ran its course split into PF and then they dropped 4e. Coupled with the "gamey" mindset that was influenced by MMO's, I might even toss in some influence from boardgames, it's created a different breed of player. Essentially, as has been pointed out in many threads, it's an effectively fractured playerbase based around a singular franchise.

But I'm a believer that there is a process in tabletop that gamers go through over the long haul. You go through phases of min-maxing, Monty Hauling, then tons of RP, and sandboxing, and you might have some debaucherous dalliances with narrative gaming (you degenerate!!) and then you get into the weird shit that borders on narrative boardgaming... at some point you have a blowout. Then you go back to where you had the most fun. That might take you into the OSR, or some other stable position where you feel you can do any or all of these things in bits or pieces without having to sacrifice the fun you're looking for.

For me - it's bog-standard sandbox play with elements of "themepark" as needed, but the PC's are in deep in the mix. It's a simply syncretic style that I'm confident that no one on this forum would find objectionable (worth fighting over). So I'm not too worried about having to come around to 5e. I think it might be that 5e will come around to me - or not.  While it might not be my cuppa right now - I certainly like it more than 3.x/4e and it's got room to grow. And that's okay with me!

Because just like people change - so do games. And there's a *lot* of good games out there these days. But I'll always honor D&D. Always.

ok first off cool post tenbones cool post

now as a younger rpg player i agree with you.
i find that i lean toward rpgs that are more gamish in feel and build.
though i have in an interesting turn of life been through most of the other phases you describe.
even more i was thru them before i even thought of table top rpgs as a thing.
from creative story telling to ultra light games to board games to rpgs.
and you are right it defiantly has an effect on how you view the whole rpgs concept.
well thats the best i can do to put it in words (not worthy a damn) so take it with a grain of salt.

Quote from: yosemitemike;904843Have you tried Combat commander (http://www.gmtgames.com/p-455-combat-commander-europe-2014-reprint.aspx) from GMT Games?  It's a squad level WWII game that feels very like a simplified, streamlined, less arcane spiritual successor to Squad Leader with GMT adding their own twist.  It gives a lot of the feel of Squad Leader without the nitpickery, fiddly turn order mechanics and general cruft that built up in Squad Leader over time.
Review
[video=youtube;Q7LV890hz2Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7LV890hz2Y[/youtube]
It uses a lot of simple yet clever tricks to simplify things and streamline play.  Stacking limits are done by simply counting the number of people depicted on the chit.  Heavy weapons chits are slightly smaller and designed to be placed offset so you can see the unit's stats and the weapon's adjustment without picking the chit up.  GMT's wrinkle is that it is card driven rather than dice and chart driven.  GMT likes card driven mechanics and uses them in a lot of their games.

Combat Commander is great. But it's not a game for bean counters. You have to understand that you're giving up control in the face of the fortunes of war, and just go along with the narrative.

Quote from: tenbones;904851I'm willing to believe Mearls and Co. that they believed they could thread this needle of making 5e all things to all players of all editions. Taken that as a starting point (and ending point) perhaps they largely succeeded from that perspective.

5e was never going to be everyone's favorite edition of D&D, the goal was more to make it no one's least favorite edition of D&D.  If they're everyone's second favorite D&D, they win.  If they made a game that anyone who is open to playing D&D period would accept a game of 5e, then they've done their job.  After they themselves blew up the D&D fanbase, they were never going to Unite the Clans under a single banner, but at least they could make peace.  We might be bitching about 5e here in one form or another, but we're bitching about a game we would play if someone at our table wanted to run it.  Mission Accomplished.

Since they own all the different versions of D&D and have them all up for sale perpetually now anyway, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't just come up with a DM's Realm for every edition and just rake in the money.  If they did it correctly, they could be gettin' paid from the OSR instead of just watching those crazy outlaws from their Mr. Burns window. :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;9049255e was never going to be everyone's favorite edition of D&D, the goal was more to make it no one's least favorite edition of D&D.  If they're everyone's second favorite D&D, they win.  If they made a game that anyone who is open to playing D&D period would accept a game of 5e, then they've done their job.  After they themselves blew up the D&D fanbase, they were never going to Unite the Clans under a single banner, but at least they could make peace.  We might be bitching about 5e here in one form or another, but we're bitching about a game we would play if someone at our table wanted to run it.  Mission Accomplished.

And that's the smart way to do it, too.  Being everyone's second favourite means more people will be buying while being one group's favourite is a smaller section of the the pie.  10% of a million is better than 100% of a thousand.

Quote from: CRKrueger;904925Since they own all the different versions of D&D and have them all up for sale perpetually now anyway, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't just come up with a DM's Realm for every edition and just rake in the money.  If they did it correctly, they could be gettin' paid from the OSR instead of just watching those crazy outlaws from their Mr. Burns window. :D

I'm thinking that this is what they're gearing up for.  Waiting so that 5e is well ensconced into everyone's mind and then putting out the original games after.  They were asking for people to send them copies of the older stuff, like Chainmail, by PDF and willing to PAY for it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9049255e was never going to be everyone's favorite edition of D&D, the goal was more to make it no one's least favorite edition of D&D.  

It's my favourite. I love old-school D&D, but I don't love the AD&D rules set, and find B/X kinda thin. 5E is just right. My long-time players prefer it too.

Quote from: Haffrung;905648It's my favourite. I love old-school D&D, but I don't love the AD&D rules set, and find B/X kinda thin. 5E is just right. My long-time players prefer it too.

Mine as well. It's the Goldilocks edition. I think they had me when I realized that multiclassing was an optional rule - never liked it, neither mechanically nor thematically, despite liking rogues with magical abilities, etc.

Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;905651Mine as well. It's the Goldilocks edition. I think they had me when I realized that multiclassing was an optional rule - never liked it, neither mechanically nor thematically, despite liking rogues with magical abilities, etc.

Wait, even though you can simply remove multiclassing from any given edition if you don't like it, what sells you on 5e is that they specifically make multiclassing an 'optional' rule?

Echoing the "not my favorite, but the one I'd be likely to run if I returned to D&D" sentiment. It would be the most vanilla form of it, though (and I think I'd use Proficiency Dice over static mods, since I like the wiser range of results). My biggest issue is the "big bag of HP's" aspect of the new version (though that is a minor quibble).

Quote from: cranebump;905674Echoing the "not my favorite, but the one I'd be likely to run if I returned to D&D" sentiment. It would be the most vanilla form of it, though (and I think I'd use Proficiency Dice over static mods, since I like the wiser range of results). My biggest issue is the "big bag of HP's" aspect of the new version (though that is a minor quibble).

Not as bad as 3rd or 4th edition.  It's been thankfully toned down some.

Quote from: Haffrung;905648It's my favourite. I love old-school D&D, but I don't love the AD&D rules set, and find B/X kinda thin. 5E is just right. My long-time players prefer it too.

Another selling point is that 5e is close enough to older editions that unlike 3e/4e, you can once again eyeball conversions. Quite a bit of 5e is very familiar to those of us who played BECMI/BX/1e/2e and the realization that old material is once again useful is so apparent my FLGS The Sentry Box (http://www.sentrybox.com/) got pretty much wiped out of the old school books that have been sitting on the shelves since the 80s and 90s. 5e is very customizable. Don't like short/long rests, then don't use them. My players are all from older editions anyway and if I just didn't use rests they wouldn't care most likely.

Fantasy Grounds is also having a sale, which lets you complete the D&D bundle for 50% off. Needless to say my wallet took a hit the other day. :D I have it set up on two laptops. My main laptop for online play and a smaller one so I can take it to a friend's place and hook it up to his TV. Unlike previous editions, I have unprecedented ability to organize and run a campaign with software that makes it easier. I can take any map from the internet and instantly have an adventure map complete with fog of war. And thanks to my latest expenditure (which my overtime shift on Friday will easily cover :D) I probably have years of adventuring to put people through without even getting into custom content.

As Haffrung mentioned, it is easy to get long time players to play 5e. They are already familiar with it. The only other D&D like game that has this kind of freedom for me would be Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Edition Companion since it lets me use both my RC and 1e material.

With the multiclassing rule, yes 5e works just fine without multiclassing and that is good. The fact that multiclassing isn't gimped either is also good. Sure, it's not multiclassing in the same way as 1e/2e but that is fine as well. It's easy enough to adapt 3.5ish gestalt rules to get an approximation of 1e multiclassing if you really wanted to go that route. But you probably don't have to and I'd only do it in a setting where it would fit, such as gestalting monk for a Wuxia setting or something.

Is it my favourite version? Probably.  I like how easy it is to mod, I also like some of the modern touches it's implemented, and yet, still feels simpler than the *complexity that 3rd and 4th added in.














*Clarification: Is it simpler?  I don't honestly know, but it FEELS that way, and that's good enough for me.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904767We are the children of concrete and steel/
This is the place where the truth is concealed/
This is the time when the lie is revealed/
Everything is possible, but nothing is real

Living Colour - "Type"

OK, you and Living Colour just gave me an idea I'm going to use:D!

Quote from: tenbones;904820So this is how I look at it... Take it with a grain (or cow-lick sized block) of salt.

People change.

My long-view theory is that most of the folks that got introduced to 3e were likely new players, or lapsed players coming back into the game. 3.x ran its course split into PF and then they dropped 4e. Coupled with the "gamey" mindset that was influenced by MMO's, I might even toss in some influence from boardgames, it's created a different breed of player. Essentially, as has been pointed out in many threads, it's an effectively fractured playerbase based around a singular franchise.

But I'm a believer that there is a process in tabletop that gamers go through over the long haul. You go through phases of min-maxing, Monty Hauling, then tons of RP, and sandboxing, and you might have some debaucherous dalliances with narrative gaming (you degenerate!!) and then you get into the weird shit that borders on narrative boardgaming... at some point you have a blowout. Then you go back to where you had the most fun. That might take you into the OSR, or some other stable position where you feel you can do any or all of these things in bits or pieces without having to sacrifice the fun you're looking for.

For me - it's bog-standard sandbox play with elements of "themepark" as needed, but the PC's are in deep in the mix. It's a simply syncretic style that I'm confident that no one on this forum would find objectionable (worth fighting over). So I'm not too worried about having to come around to 5e. I think it might be that 5e will come around to me - or not.  While it might not be my cuppa right now - I certainly like it more than 3.x/4e and it's got room to grow. And that's okay with me!

Because just like people change - so do games. And there's a *lot* of good games out there these days. But I'll always honor D&D. Always.

Totally true, man. Just wanted to say I agree, though I ended up in a slightly different place than you:).

Quote from: CRKrueger;904925Since they own all the different versions of D&D and have them all up for sale perpetually now anyway, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't just come up with a DM's Realm for every edition and just rake in the money.  If they did it correctly, they could be gettin' paid from the OSR instead of just watching those crazy outlaws from their Mr. Burns window. :D

I agree they can make money from all the versions. What I don't understand is how you think they'd make money off the OSR?
If you just mean "by selling them via the DM's Realm", I agree, might not be all that much, but it's going to help the balance sheets;).