Thoughts on 4.0 now that the fervor has died down a bit

[cerebro1974]

I miss the gaming heyday of the eighties. Sigh

 

Amen to that. This is the very reason I started this topic, to see if the new lick of paint took the game any closer to it's roots. Alas after most of what i have read here, it has not. Horses for courses, though.

 

 

An interesting anecdote. I recently started gaming again with one of the guys who got me started in DnD WAAAAAYYYY back in '83. He has been completely out of the loop DnD or PnP wise for the past 15 years. We were gaming the OLD keep on the borderlands module, using what meager 1st ed rules we could find in his old DnD crate. It did not go very smoothly so he goes out and buys all the new books to get back into gaming right. He studies the books for a couple of weeks and calls me up......

 

" What the f**k is this s**t? " He says " it's like a pseudo medieval Superheroes game. "

 

And he is no churmudgeon either.

 

Anyway, as long as peopel are having fun what the hell else matters?

 

 

True to that! Thus why I am sticking with AD&D, loved it in the late 80's and it has been full of memories for me! But it doesn't matter what they move up to as long as there are people to keep gaming alive!

[SOldcorn]

I am going to give 4th edition a go in the near future. But just to agree with Byran about how roleplaying is what your group make of it. I have been running an Earthdawn campaign for a while now. We started by doing the original first circle pre-written adventure. Which is intended to take three to four sessions. My group of players made it last four months, but it was all awesome fun. Players make the games good or bad not the rules, bad players can ruin the best game and good players can make the worst system ever fun.

[SIGIL]

Well I do think that there are a lot of mechanics that severely hamper or at the very least directly influence role play.... Regenerating hit points for one.

 

I would also say that the entire structure of the classes seems like it would kind of pigeon hole everyone into making much the same action in any given situation. It all seems kind of formulaic.

[joshuaslater]

Dig. As for there being a difference between a magazine subscription and the online resources, I'll take the old school magazine any day. I've still got Dragon magazines from those days.

 

I work pushing files all day and recording stuff into a computer. I'm not looking to spoil my roleplay experience by lugging my laptop on the subway to South Philly.

 

I don't hold it against anyone for embracing the new technology, and if it makes your experience better, bully for you.

 

All I need these days is a pencil, some dice, a character sheet, and the Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition. Add imagination, and stir. Of course, cool miniatures should not only be added, but be first on my list.

 

I'm not into classes and level based characters. I like more grit. I like the fact that combat is deadly, and even a mook can kill a legendary character. I like games with no resurrection or raising of the dead.

 

Most of all, I miss the vocabulary. I remember learning the words "anathema" and "weal" from a paragraph in the Player's Handbook assassin character class. Remember the assassin? Remember "save versus poison or die?"

[chronoplasm]

Yeah, I wish Wizards would put out paper magazines again.

 

A lot of the issues people have with 4E can be fixed with house-ruling though.

You want grittiness?

Whenever somebody wants to spend a Healing Surge outside of combat, I make them do a Healing check to see if they are successful. If they fail the check, they have to wait a while before they can try again.

One of my player's characters lost an arm in battle. The character lost the ability to wield things in the off-hand and he suffered a permanent loss of one Healing Surge. This lost healing surge could not be recovered by taking an extended rest.

He ended up getting a prosthetic arm to replace his lost arm.

He was a good sport about the whole thing though, so I rewarded him. His new arm has a cannon built in. :)

 

You don't like classes?

Try this:

 

At level 1, everybody gets to choose two at-will powers, one encounter power, and one daily power, from any classes.

 

Do away with class features, but give everybody 5 feats at level 1.

[joshuaslater]

Our group basically house ruled we play Savage Worlds. No mucky muck to wade through. I can create the character I want, and the traits, skills, edges and hindrances only help me bring it to life.

 

The system also handles firearms better than any d20 variant I've read. This is especially good for those campaigns where you muddy the waters of fantasy with black powder, an idea anathema to Gygax's vision, yet still appealing to so many, and now even more so with the advent of the steampunk genre.

 

The other huge turnoff for me, and this is from jump street when Hasbro bought the property, is the artwork. I find the interior art so lacking from the days of the original Fiend Folio. That was the best artwork I can remember from those heady days. The artwork is cartoony, the language dumbed down, and the game is marketed towards twelve year olds.

 

Next up is the awkwardness of trying to be so inclusive of gender that the text would switch from "he" to "she" after nearly every other paragraph or so. It's wonderful to encourage everyone to play, but the language of the books becomes clumsy.

 

I've always maintained that the original Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide were written for adults, but played by adolescents, and the newer versions are written for adolescents, and played by adults.

[chronoplasm]

I can sort of agree on the gender thing, except I would prefer that they take out 'his' and 'her' entirely and use the neutral 'hir'.

 

I can sort of agree on the artwork too. My problem isn't that it's too 'cartoony' though, but rather that it's too Liefieldesque.

 

As for the writing style, I think a forum-goer on rpg.net summed up my thoughts pretty well when he said this:

 

Maybe it is only because 4E hits on of my personal preferences here (and because of my experience reading technical manuals), but I'm half convinced that this is deliberate on the part of the writers. 4E reads exactly like a really good reference book--dull as dishwater, unless you happen to get excited about what you can do with it. But where this makes that first reading a bit of a chore, it pays off in reference. Because it's so focused on getting the point across, you don't need to reference it much. And when you do reference it, you can find what you want pretty darn fast. (It's not perfect in this regard. There are some minor organizational issues in the DMG that they would probably do a bit different a second time around. But most everything is where you expect it to be.)

[Lars Porsenna]

The other huge turnoff for me, and this is from jump street when Hasbro bought the property, is the artwork. I find the interior art so lacking from the days of the original Fiend Folio. That was the best artwork I can remember from those heady days. The artwork is cartoony, the language dumbed down, and the game is marketed towards twelve year olds.

 

Oh I'm definitely not so sure about that. The FF had some good stuff in it, but a lot was really 'meh. I much preferred Trampier's very precise style (from the few we get in MM) as well as Elmore's. Erol Otus automatically gets the nod. But art by Sutherland, and a few others, looked like scribblings on a HS notebook. granted, AD&D was not the only one to suffer from this (Battletech in the early days had some pretty dire art), but I'd hardly push AD&D as a superior example; like any, some was good, some was bad within the range of opinions.

 

Damon.

[SIGIL]

" Hir " WTF is that? I have never in all my years of reading ever once encountered the word..............

 

[ R A N T ] The use of " she " as a catch all replacement for the word " he " makes me grit my teeth everytime I encounter it. Actually I usually just stop reading the information right there. It is not the word itself it is the general intent of it's use. I am no cheauvanist, but I STAUNCHLY refuse to neuter myself at every turn of some weak kneed pansy's whim in the pursuit of " equality ". People are so busy being offended that they have stopped thinking about what it is that is offending them to begin with. [/R A N T ]

 

Deep breaths... OK back on topic..............

 

 

I find the interior art so lacking from the days of the original Fiend Folio. That was the best artwork I can remember from those heady days. The artwork is cartoony, the language dumbed down, and the game is marketed towards twelve year olds.

 

SMACK ON! The art is all technically very well done, but the entire genre of fantasy art has kind of begun to parody itself. I know that to some extent I am guilty of it myself, but I do try to temper my fantasy with a good healthy dose of reality or at leats plausibility. Now-a-days it seems female characters look more like streetwalkers or porn stars than they do valiant warrior women or erudite sorceresses..... Course that could be thrown upon the altar of the culture at large.............. must concentrate........... Anyway, fantasy in general has lost it's magic to me.. And I think that is why people have grown bored with it and moved on Sci-Fi and Steam Punk..... But even those are getting ridiculous as well.. DnD is no longer about great adventures, it is about treasure hauls and body counts.

 

Anyway, I forgot what my original intention for this post was so............... Time to go sculpt some Chic Knights in Platemail bikini tops, chain mail thongs and spiked scalemail garters...............

[chronoplasm]

Now-a-days it seems female characters look more like streetwalkers or porn stars than they do valiant warrior women or erudite sorceresses.....

 

"Nowadays"?

 

 

Hir is a very rarely used word, but it is in fact a real gender-neutral singular pronoun. It's a good word to use when you don't want to make any assumptions as to the gender of your audience.

Some people get offended when you mistake their gender.

Many men get upset when they are called "miss" or "ma'am", as though their manliness is being called into question.

Likewise, many women get upset when they are called "sir" or "young man".

The subject becomes very tricky when dealing with transgendered, adrogynous, and hermaphroditic people.

 

If you don't care about offending people, that's fine as long as you aren't trying to sell something. Remember however that Wizards of the Coast is a business. It does not make much sense from a business perspective to offend your customers.

[joshuaslater]

Cheescake never goes out of style, does it??

 

As for "hir," I ain't never heard of it, and my dictionary hasn't caught on neither.

 

I'm glad people are happy with whatever RPG they play. I'm having a blast on Sundays, so I'll chalk it up to preference, and get back to miniatures and painting. I have to score the perfect model for my character's sidekick!!

 

I may have to commission one from Tre when he's back at the workdesk.

 

Have you finished the Goblins yet????????

[chronoplasm]

As for "hir," I ain't never heard of it, and my dictionary hasn't caught on neither.

 

It's a new word. Language does that; it changes and evolves.

 

 

My sister and her friends had a lot of fun playing 4E this past weekend. DM'ing for little kids is fun.

I really wish I could get some people my own age around here to play. Lot's of people that seem ready, willing, and able, but wishy-washy when it comes to setting a time to actually play.

[joshuaslater]

Playing any game can be fun with kids. My ten year old nephew went nuts for Chronopia. Just pushing around a big Dwarf Blood Totem was enough for him.

 

Uncle Josh: "Does the Totem go berserk, Jake?"

 

Jake: "Yeah!!!"

 

To be that age again. Sigh.

[SIGIL]

Have you finished the Goblins yet????????

 

The tabs are drying tonight. Tommorrow they ship. I am still trying to decide whether or not to do the pre order thing this time around.

 

 

One of my favorite classics. ;)

 

Yes, she is not realisticly girded, but there is more plausibilty to her armour than 90 % of what can be found in the most recent DnD books. Her sternum is covered, her chainmail is an actual shirt instead of just a halter top that does not really protect anything. she has a shield and a sword that looks like it is meant for killing rather than looking pretty. True she needs a helm and a gambeson at the least, but at least her chainmail is functional enough to turn a cut to the most exposed areas during a fight.

 

 

Some people get offended when you mistake their gender.

 

Using " he " or " his " is not an assumption of the reader's gender.

[joshuaslater]

I don't like the idea of preorders anymore. Cash and carry.

 

As for 4.0, the kids seem to like it. I see lots of them playing at the only game store in Philly in University City. Nice to see people gathered around a table and interacting.