Quote from: daniel_ream;491171This thread is made of win.

I played a game of 4E once where the GM's girlfriend was trying so hard to actually roleplay and be the Noble Hero cleric and talk to people and everyone else was running around with their gonzo PHB7 race/class combos brawling with each other whenever they got bored.  It was quite sad, really.

I've seen the exact same thing with every other edition of D&D, though, so.

I saw far, far more gonzo/wacky/mood-killing combinations in 3e than 4e, personally.

But yeah, edition has very little to do with the role-playing.  My 4e campaign had plenty of RP moments and several sessions with no combat at all.  The biggest problem in this regard with 4e is that the presentation of the game, as estar pointed out, does not emphasize this.

I do agree with the criticism that 4e's powers tend to get a little too divorced from reality, causing all kinds of issues with immersion (I don't agree with the arguments about it killing simulation, though, as D&D always sucked at being sim-friendly).

Quote from: Serious Paul;491174Look pal, quote the stuff that matters. if we all just start quoting stuff this thread will be pandemonium!

Yep, it's a good thing we banned the batslap comics to prevent threads becoming ridiculous non-sequiturs...   :rolleyes:

Quote from: daniel_ream;491171I played a game of 4E once where the GM's girlfriend was trying so hard to actually roleplay and be the Noble Hero cleric and talk to people and everyone else was running around with their gonzo PHB7 race/class combos brawling with each other whenever they got bored.  It was quite sad, really.

I've seen the exact same thing with every other edition of D&D, though, so.

There's definitely that.

JG

Quote from: Aos;491157I'd rather play WoW and MTG at the same time than play 4e. I mean it's pretty much the same thing right?

You left out minis. Required! Because without these all sorts of arguments start at the gametable ('am I really there? is that the minotaur over there? no? so that's the troll?') and then things might go wrong - horribly wrong.

Quote from: Windjammer;491186You left out minis. Required! Because without these all sorts of arguments start at the gametable ('am I really there? is that the minotaur over there? no? so that's the troll?') and then things might go wrong - horribly wrong.

That's a great little film, I saw it last week.

Also, I forgot the minis angle, but I am now reminded that D&D was never meant to be played without them and that 4e and 0e are essentially the same game.

Quote from: Serious Paul;491152In all seriousness I vaguely recall when 4e was introduced that there were people upset over it. I recall buying the 4e books at the time, briefly reading through them deciding that maybe my nephew would like them, and giving them away. I just don't play D&D style games.

I don't know why you feel the need to contribute to this thread, Paul. Since you don't play D&D style games, you will never know the hurt that is 4E - friends say it's like being sodomized by a satay stick of d20s - and 5E, will be much worse. The shivers of anticipation is both shocking and telling.

Regards
David R

Quote from: David R;491205friends say it's like being sodomized by a satay stick of d20s - and 5E, will be much worse.

They're changing to a d4 dicepool system??!!:eek:

Quote from: estar;490980I still don't see him "getting" it. The big problems of 4e from the start has been one of presentation not of design. Musing about mechanics isn't going to fix a broken presentation where adventures consist of encounters rewarding rollplaying rather than roleplaying. Where mechanics are designed for their impact on the game rather than how it reflect the genre or setting.

That's not just a presentation problem, though. The focus on My Precious Encounter(TM) design may have originated as a fetishized abuse of 3E guidelines, but 4E hard-coded that stuff into the rules. (And Gamma World, as an example of recent WotC design, just makes the problem worse.)

With that being said, I'm facepalming pretty hard here. If WotC wants 5E to have any kind of positive effect on their market share or roleplaying in general, then they need to cut out this "the previous edition totally sucks!" crap.

Quote from: jgants;491001I still think 4e was a decent game at doing what it did, but with a lot of flaws.

This. 4E took a very narrow slice of D&D's gameplay, defined it as being the One True D&D Experience, and then did a pretty decent job of improving and focusing on that gameplay.

They also made some incredibly inexplicable mistakes in which their mechanical design had the exact opposite effect from what they claimed it was doing. But, for the most part, the game did what it was supposed to do very well.

4e is a piece of shit. WotC even admits it, now.

. . . and to think that all the fanboys hailed it as the greatest D&D yet.

What a joke.

The craptastic MMO/miniatures wargame/CCG abomination that is 4e will go down in history as the worst iteration of D&D ever. Complete fail.

Get your wallet ready for 5e, suckers.

Did the Forge kill 4e? WotC decided that DnD was "incoherent" and proceeded to make a focused game that did its job well for the slice of gamers who liked that style, while excluding the others. Discounting the fact that DnD had always been a messy, broad church and it may have been successful because of, rather than in spite of that.

Quote from: 1989;491230The craptastic MMO/miniatures wargame/CCG abomination that is 4e will go down in history as the worst iteration of D&D ever. Complete fail.

This indicates much confidence that 5e will be measurably better. Granted, sheer regression to the mean implies this, but WoTC's in a tough, tough, spot.

4e simply doesn't work on many levels outside of combat, and the combat doesn't work very well at all past paragon. Fixing this, while still somehow re-introducing the ideas of Dungeons of Dragons and still using much of anything from 4e, is a talllllll order which could go very wrong.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;491220With that being said, I'm facepalming pretty hard here. If WotC wants 5E to have any kind of positive effect on their market share or roleplaying in general, then they need to cut out this "the previous edition totally sucks!" crap.

Their groveling worked on me. They've said everything they've needed to and now I'm totaly predisposed to admire their sepuku.

Quote from: 1989;491230Get your wallet ready for 5e, suckers.

I'll probably largely pass this time around.


Will take a look at the 5E core books at a bookstore, when they are first released.

At most I may try it at one of those D&D game day events.  That's probably the extent of it I'll go.

Quote from: The_Shadow;491241Did the Forge kill 4e? WotC decided that DnD was "incoherent" and proceeded to make a focused game that did its job well for the slice of gamers who liked that style, while excluding the others. Discounting the fact that DnD had always been a messy, broad church and it may have been successful because of, rather than in spite of that.

If you're blaming any group of players, probably Living Greyhawk ones are the easiest to blame since they were the ones who got to playtest 4ed and it seems to have been focused the most on catering to the "living" campaign play-style more than anything else.

Quote from: Cranewings;491162I have literally never seen people role play with 4e. I'm sure you can. I knew a group that role played magic the gathering. I've just not seen anyone to with 4e. I personally found the game totally detached.

The strength of role-playing, IMHO, is that characters can act with spontaneity (within the personality the player imagined for them) and that items and spells are not defined by precise rules.

The first one is pretty self explanatory, and ranges from the charging wizard to the timid fighter, to a team which develops his own tactics without imbecile "suggestions" like "if you choose this class then you must behave this way".

The second one may sound a little bit more perplexing. After all items and exp. spells are defined by pretty precise rules. However a good player can always look at them and find an out-of-the box way to use unexpected means to solve a situation. A bit like Jason Bourne, who with a teddy bear and a rolled magazine can maul a SWAT team. A flintlock can be used to awe a primitive tribe, or to scare one who lives in terror of fire due to a nearby red dragon (works also with a simple "Burning Hands").

A player of mine took "tailoring" as her professional skill. She then proceeded to dye the interior of her cloak using a sand-like tint, and to embroil in it some southern decorations. When in a crowd she reverses her cloak, puts a cloth around her head (so to hide her hair's color and cut), kicks off her boots (thus lowering her apparent height) and there she goes: +4 bonus to disguise. None of the above is in the rules.

4E... well, everything is pretty defined by strict rules and strict confines. You play the way the game supposes for you to play, with your only real choice being what tactical decisions will you make within that framework. Sure, maybe the DM may allow/force some "holistic" gaming. But, in my experience, it takes a DM who already has experience with other RPGs to do so - which means that, as an introduction to what role-playing should be about, 4E still wouldn't be the first choice.

Quote from: The_Shadow;491241Did the Forge kill 4e?

I my mind I have always associated 4E designers listening to The Forge with Tsaritsa Alexandra Romanova listening to Rasputin. Dunno why :rolleyes: