Back in 2e's time, the game rules were really just a tool box: the players and DMs were outright encouraged to use what they liked, ignore what they didn't, and patch it up with their own stuff. The rules were there to enhance the game, not to restrict it, and the system understood it. The DM was the ultimate authority in everything.
In the later editions, the rules were the god, and the DM became nothing more than their servant.
Back in 2e's time, the game rules were really just a tool box: the players and DMs were outright encouraged to use what they liked, ignore what they didn't, and patch it up with their own stuff. The rules were there to enhance the game, not to restrict it, and the system understood it. The DM was the ultimate authority in everything.
In the later editions, the rules were the god, and the DM became nothing more than their servant.
I'm wishing I could hit agree nine or ten times to this comment!
1. Granted, 4E does kind of need some physicality, but there are plenty of tabletop games with even more reliance on battle maps. And, let's be honest, the battle map can be necessary in just about any edition to determine who is getting hit by a fireball's radius, who is flanking whom, etc. You're still just as capable of narrating what an inanimate figurine does as you are a purely mental image of your character. 1a. I'm not sure why you even brought up skill challenges, given skill challenges are just an attempt to organize and codify a challenge that requires more than a single skill check. Skill checks have been around since 3.0, if not earlier. I remember seeing some 2E statblocks with "proficiencies" in things like woodcraft and herbalism, IIRC.
2. Again, power cards are just an organizational tool for a character's abilities. Once-per-encounter, daily, and at-will abilities have been floating around the game forever. And, given that most powers consist of an attack roll and a special effect, the ability to roleplay what happens has not been lost in the least. An attack that deals weapon damage and knocks the target prone can be flavored differently every time you use it.
3. The art and feel of the game, and what they remind you of, are purely subjective. Besides, there's nothing wrong with taking aesthetic inspiration from other media. D&D is clearly inspired greatly by Tolkien, and other, more modern authors have certainly influenced the game as well. 3.5 had The Book of Nine Swords, which was based loosely on swordsmanship in some of the more high-power-level Chinese martial arts movies like The Flying Guillotine or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
@Chow Yep this makes no sense at all.. I suppose you could just make the stuff up and write out some background on a separate sheet of paper, but your ideas still wouldn't be completely legitimate (as determined by the game rules). New players would never know to do this because it's not part of the 'rules'
@atcDave No, I love house rules. I'm just saying the game was sort of incomplete, because we -had- to make up rules to run a game. I completely agree with everything you said about modifying the core concepts. Play the game how you want to
@_N8_: I'd like to add the almost complete removal of all utility spells and abilities, anything to do with stuff outside fights, such as craft skills, professions, and similar.
Now how am I supposed to know if my character is a master chef?
Utility spells and abilities are covered by magic rituals, and...you guessed it, abilities/spells that are actually CALLED Utility Powers.
The battle map can be necessary in just about any edition to determine etc.
Nope, all of these things can be completely (and more easily) determined by the DM. The absence of a battle map allows the game to more easily evolve, as the DM chooses.
1a. Skill challenges are just an attempt to organize and codify a challenge that requires more than a single skill check.
You're correct, but the purpose of skills themselves is to flavor a character and help tell the story, not to determine the result of a skill challenge
2. An attack that deals weapon damage and knocks the target prone can be flavored differently every time you use it.
(From another post): Utility spells and abilities are covered by magic rituals, and...you guessed it, abilities/spells that are actually CALLED Utility Powers.
Therefore the existance of said power card/attack is completely unnecessary and limiting, as you could RP and flavor any attack or spell you make for any possible effect of your choice if the DM allows it.
DM: "You want to leap off the wall and decapitate the goblin's head? The mage wants to trap the sea serpent within a wall of ice with cone of cold? The evil rogue wants to backstab the other guy, but deal no damage and permamently paralyze him from the waist down? Which ligaments do you cut? If you RP it well, please, PLEASE do it, it will make our game more enjoyable. The outcome may not be what you expect, however"
3. The art and feel of the game, and what they remind you of, are purely subjective.
I am well refuted, my opinion is my own. But at least many D&D players that I know agree with me on this point, so my opinion must count for something. Aside the point, the art is clearly a bid to pull in the video game crowd, much like the entire 4th edition.
I prefer to "build a character" so that I can "play a character" uniquely my own. That's what character options like feats let me do. Otherwise, what differentiates two first-level Fighters who both like greatswords, mechanically? You can just tell new players to take things like Weapon Focus or saving throw boost feats like Great Fortitude and Iron Will.
I couldn't agree less. To me, playing a role has almost nothing to do with what your class or abilities are and everything to do with the personality you craft around the name and stats. I could play the same (stat and ability wise) character a hundred times and each one would be a totally different character. That "To me" is role playing. Not requiring that abilities define who you are.
Nope, all of these things can be completely (and more easily) determined by the DM. The absence of a battle map allows the game to more easily evolve, as the DM chooses.
Being at the mercy of the DM deciding I'm in range of a fireball I could be avoiding altogether doesn't sit well with me as a player. Allowing players the agency to stay the hell away from things they think are dangerous is something I can appreciate as a DM.
You're correct, but the purpose of skills themselves is to flavor a character and help tell the story, not to determine the result of a skill challenge
The purpose of skills is to do both, flavor characters and solve problems with successful skill checks. A well-designed skill challenge follows the tenet of "fail forward." For example, the party is looking for a specific thief in town. A skill challenge can determine if they find him right away, or if they run into some interesting complications but eventually find him or a clue to his whereabouts afterwards. If you can't do something like that, you're better off just not using a skill challenge, and the DMG will tell you as much.
Therefore the existance of said power card/attack is completely unnecessary and limiting, as you could RP and flavor any attack or spell you make for any possible effect of your choice if the DM allows it.
DM: "You want to leap off the wall and decapitate the goblin's head? The mage wants to trap the sea serpent within a wall of ice with cone of cold? The evil rogue wants to backstab the other guy, but deal no damage and permamently paralyze him from the waist down? Which ligaments do you cut? If you RP it well, please, PLEASE do it, it will make our game more enjoyable. The outcome may not be what you expect, however"
The powers system doesn't prevent you from doing any of that. What it DOES do is provide you a specific way to accomplish a specific neat thing, even when your DM would not be convinced by your explanation or reasoning. Also, it speeds up the turn. Rather than have to tell the DM every time you want to knock an enemy over, you can just take a power that lets you do that, then you can describe the action however you want. This doesn't somehow make it impossible to improvise. You could take that same power that normally merely knocks enemies prone and say to the DM "Well, considering I've befuddled this ogre into tripping all over himself on such a flimsy bridge, shouldn't he fall through the rotten wood that was barely supporting his weight earlier?" Your DM nods in agreement, and boom, that ogre gets swept down the river or tumbles to his death.
I am well refuted, my opinion is my own. But at least many D&D players that I know agree with me on this point, so my opinion must count for something. Aside the point, the art is clearly a bid to pull in the video game crowd, much like the entire 4th edition.
The art in all the books has been designed to draw in those who appreciate visual stimuli. That's nothing new. D&D is also a commercial product, so more customers are a good thing. I don't see the issue in appealing to a group that offers a new customer base. You're on a forum for a video game right now.
I couldn't agree less. To me, playing a role has almost nothing to do with what your class or abilities are and everything to do with the personality you craft around the name and stats. I could play the same (stat and ability wise) character a hundred times and each one would be a totally different character. That "To me" is role playing. Not requiring that abilities define who you are.
All IMHO.
I was speaking of mechanics, not necessarily roleplay. I never said I defined who my characters are by their abilities. Sure, you can play a character with a different personality, but what if you want his fighting style to be completely different from the last guy you made, but like the stats and the equipment choice? I like to know that my guy can sacrifice accuracy for damage and use the Power Attack feat because that's his style of fighting. I like to be able to build a Barbarian that focuses on grappling and can wrestle a chimera to the ground with his bare hands. It's the same as choosing a different repertoire of spells from a Wizard to Wizard. It adds flavor and the potential for radically different playstyles.
@Schneidend I accept that we all have different playstyles, and yours is fine if you have fun with it. However I need to say, for your benefit, that there is a better way to play the game. 4e is not true D&D, and has deviated far from the original vision of Gygax & friends (classic D&D) to reel in higher revenue.
@_N8_ Please. In the original "vision" of D&D it was just a tactical war game on a smaller scale. All this roleplaying, immersive storytelling, and getting attached to our characters we've been talking about? These things baffled Gygax when he first heard players were doing them. It was designed as a simulationist game first and foremost. Really, D&D was an attempt to make a video game that simulated Conan or LOTR before there were video games.
Regardless, what you have just now posted is not an argument. I had an answer for each of the things you said are 'wrong with' 4E. You haven't refuted any of those points. Don't condescend to me, telling me I have a "right" to my playstyle, but that it isn't the "right" playstyle.
And Gary Gygax had been fired from TSR prior to 2E precisely because he didn't understand the flexibility and story-telling issues that were becoming most important to many players. We all used to get a big kick out of his "but that's not D&D anymore..." sort of comments in the mid-80s.
To me, the game is best when it's facilitating the story I want to tell. What I dislike about the later rules (too much structure, too much rigidness, and especially not enough randomness) seems to be exactly what you do want. That's just completely different styles of play. And that's fine, even among my friends who love 2E we often had very different styles and strengths as DMs and players. I often partnered with one friend who excelled at deeper stories but disliked characters and game management. We designed some fun adventures together, but had a hard time actually playing in each others games.
I was speaking of mechanics, not necessarily roleplay. I never said I defined who my characters are by their abilities. Sure, you can play a character with a different personality, but what if you want his fighting style to be completely different from the last guy you made, but like the stats and the equipment choice? I like to know that my guy can sacrifice accuracy for damage and use the Power Attack feat because that's his style of fighting. I like to be able to build a Barbarian that focuses on grappling and can wrestle a chimera to the ground with his bare hands. It's the same as choosing a different repertoire of spells from a Wizard to Wizard. It adds flavor and the potential for radically different playstyles.
I think you must have had some bad DM's from your reply (always assuming you ever played in a group, which, if you haven't, sorry in advance).
Way back in 1.5-2 era, you had a set limited set of abilities. You had nothing but your imagination to flesh out characters. so if you wanted to specialize in one form of attack or another, you had that ability, you just didn't have a bunch of rules shoehorning you into that way. What you describe above are all crutches built into the 'Newer' rules sets such that you don't have to imagine them. You have rules around them.
As for worrying that a DM might not accord you the ability to dodge out of the way of a fireball, that is 100% between you and the DM. They are supposed to create worlds and provide challenges, not 'Do in the player-characters' in an adversarial manner. My DM was always looking for interesting and inventive ways for the party to succeed. Now, admittedly he could be quite the tyrant when his rulings were challenged, but he was always fair.
At the end of the day, both systems 'Work' and no one is denying that. However, none of what you say makes the newer systems superior is lacking in the older systems, except rigid structure and crutches.
@actDave You seem to have misunderstood me. My point was that @_N8_ was suggesting that D&D was originally about story and roleplay, and that later editions (or apparently just 4E) have failed to live up to that legacy. I originally pointed out that 4E more than complements literary play, house rules, and improvization (in fact it provides some tables to make improvization faster and involve less guesswork), and then reminded him/her that Gygax originally planned the game as a simulation, and not a storytelling medium, as I can tell you are aware. I was not advocating that Gygax's approach was correct, only that _N8_ did not have his facts straight about that approach.
We'll have to agree to disagree on how "rigid" later editions are. Players are capable of conjuring up insane plans and daring maneuvers regardless of the Edition.
@Schneidend My previous posts sufficiently describe the general spirit of the game I'm trying to convey to you. I have no desire to argue your points and continue endless strawman arguments, discussing minutiae and intricacies of the game mechanics. If you'll listen to the interview Kuntz does talk about a story telling element in early d&d. I wasn't trying to condescend, just the opposite. See @atcDave's last post for what I meant.
Way back in 1.5-2 era, you had a set limited set of abilities. You had nothing but your imagination to flesh out characters. so if you wanted to specialize in one form of attack or another, you had that ability, you just didn't have a bunch of rules shoehorning you into that way. What you describe above are all crutches built into the 'Newer' rules sets such that you don't have to imagine them. You have rules around them.
As for worrying that a DM might not accord you the ability to dodge out of the way of a fireball, that is 100% between you and the DM. They are supposed to create worlds and provide challenges, not 'Do in the player-characters' in an adversarial manner. My DM was always looking for interesting and inventive ways for the party to succeed. Now, admittedly he could be quite the tyrant when his rulings were challenged, but he was always fair.
At the end of the day, both systems 'Work' and no one is denying that. However, none of what you say makes the newer systems superior is lacking in the older systems, except rigid structure and crutches.
All IMHO.
I have several friends who DM. I myself am a DM.
My points was that feats allow you to do cool stuff without DM intervention. The guy with Improved Grapple is always better at grappling, while the guy without it has to improvise and cast a Grease spell on his clothes to make him more slippery, or something. Both approaches are cool in their own way, I appreciate both static mechanics and improvisational mechanics, and both can be used in the same Edition, the same campaign, and the same individual game session. I just like to be able to define neat stuff my character can ALWAYS do, regardless of whether or not he has some kind of improvisational tool at hand.
It's nice when the DM says "okay" to you tying a beholder's eyestalks together to limit its eye ray options, but it's also cool to know that your character has that option built-in because he's so awesome at grappling. Probably a bad example, since there will never be a feat that specifically says "You can tie a beholder's eye stalks together," but I hope you see my point.
Further, I never suggested 4E was superior. The goal of my posts has been to illustrate that 4E isn't lacking any of the things the player of older editions claim it has lost. It's still a vehicle for telling great stories about fantastical heroes and villains wielding swords and sorcery.
As I mentioned to spyder above, I've been attempting to address your grievances with 4E. You said it lacks story/roleplay, and I feel I have more than refuted that. You feel powers are pointless because you can always improvise with DM approval what a power can accomplish, and I argue that powers allow you to do cool stuff without necessarily having to improvise or explain to your DM how it works. Instead of addressing my reasoning, you told me my choice of edition is not the right way to play and not "true D&D." That is ridiculous, and certifiably condescending. You don't just prefer your game and playstyle, which would be perfectly acceptable. Instead, you seem to think yours is actually, quantifiably -better- than mine.
Further, I never suggested 4E was superior. The goal of my posts has been to illustrate that 4E isn't lacking any of the things the player of older editions claim it has lost. It's still a vehicle for telling great stories about fantastical heroes and villains wielding swords and sorcery.
And equally I am not saying that 4E is inferior on that basis. Merely that everything that can be done in 4E can be done in 2E. You just don't have as much rules and structure around it all. I like the more free flowing methods personally. But I admit that is a personal choice.
And equally I am not saying that 4E is inferior on that basis. Merely that everything that can be done in 4E can be done in 2E. You just don't have as much rules and structure around it all. I like the more free flowing methods personally. But I admit that is a personal choice.
And I prefer to be able to write a handful of things I can do on my character sheet whenever I please. Sure, a DM can houserule some grapple rules into 2E, but Pathfinder/3.5/4E has them already, so I like being able to take Improved Grapple to make me better at using that action.
@actDave We'll have to agree to disagree on how "rigid" later editions are. Players are capable of conjuring up insane plans and daring maneuvers regardless of the Edition.
I think we're in complete agreement about that! I think you've arrived at exactly the point many of us old farts (and some youngins' too!) are trying to make in the various rules sets discussions. None of the rules editions is innately "better" than any of the others. They have different strengths and weaknesses and each of us, especially those who have DMed much, often have both very strong and very good reasons for choosing the rules set we use. Defenses will go up quickly when we start proclaiming superiority of one over another. Strong likes and dislikes are fine, but statements presented in absolute terms are not. And I'm not saying you've done that. But many commenters here and elsewhere have done it, and it may leave some of us a little over sensitive if we think its happening again!
you seem to think yours is actually, quantifiably -better- than mine.
You know what man, it IS quantifiably better. Whether or not you think my statement is condescending is your perception, I don't care. In a previous post, I cited the words of Ander who said, "[4e] does the worst job of teaching one how to rp or what an rpg really is" and perhaps you are its victim.
Here is a 4e review by one of the best DMs in the world. He presents the review in suuch an absurd and ridiculous way, but it's fitting. It suits the ridiculousness of 4e and our argument.
And equally I am not saying that 4E is inferior on that basis. Merely that everything that can be done in 4E can be done in 2E. You just don't have as much rules and structure around it all. I like the more free flowing methods personally. But I admit that is a personal choice.
And I prefer to be able to write a handful of things I can do on my character sheet whenever I please. Sure, a DM can houserule some grapple rules into 2E, but Pathfinder/3.5/4E has them already, so I like being able to take Improved Grapple to make me better at using that action.
No matter how you explain it, you prefer more rules. I prefer more free form. It's that simple.
Edit: I don't want my game bogged down with more rules than necessary. Some rules are absolutely essential. Some are less so and should be up to the discretion of the DM, not some rule book. IMHO.
You know what man, it IS quantifiably better. Whether or not you think my statement is condescending is your perception, I don't care. In a previous post, I cited the words of Ander who said, "[4e] does the worst job of teaching one how to rp or what an rpg really is" and perhaps you are its victim.
Here is a 4e review by one of the best DMs in the world. He presents the review in suuch an absurd and ridiculous way, but it's fitting. It suits the ridiculousness of 4e and our argument.
I disagree that 4E does a poor job. The 4E handbook is littered with sidebars and paragraphs that suggest tips on how to flesh out characters and flavor attacks, powers, and classes. You're just being a grognard at this point, man.
@Schneidend I proudly wear the grognard title, which means 'complaining, veteran soldier' (of d&d I'd like to think). In closing, the poll results speak more volumes than I ever could about the subject.
But to play devil's advocate, I wonder how much 4 and 4.5 being low is for the simple reason that many BG players are old school and voting nostalgia. They grew up on 2-3.5 editions and therefore those are 'The best' to them?
No matter how you explain it, you prefer more rules. I prefer more free form. It's that simple.
Edit: I don't want my game bogged down with more rules than necessary. Some rules are absolutely essential. Some are less so and should be up to the discretion of the DM, not some rule book. IMHO.
I just explained that I don't prefer more rules, but I prefer more character customization. I like to focus my character's abilities in particular ways. I like to choose more stuff besides race, class, and stats. I enjoy very rules light games like Fate (which also have things called stunts that are kind of similar to feats in D&D).
No matter how you explain it, you prefer more rules. I prefer more free form. It's that simple.
Edit: I don't want my game bogged down with more rules than necessary. Some rules are absolutely essential. Some are less so and should be up to the discretion of the DM, not some rule book. IMHO.
I just explained that I don't prefer more rules, but I prefer more character customization. I like to focus my character's abilities in particular ways. I like to choose more stuff besides race, class, and stats. I enjoy very rules light games like Fate (which also have things called stunts that are kind of similar to feats in D&D).
More character customization IS more rules. There is no two ways about it.
More character customization IS more rules. There is no two ways about it.
I guess you're right. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I prefer more rules so my character can do certain things consistently, rather than having to constantly ask if my DM is okay with me doing something. "Can I have my character be really good at dealing fire damage?" Vs. "My character is really good at dealing fire damage."
I've played and DM'd every every edition of D&D so far: pre-1e ("OD&D"), basic, advanced, 1e through 4e, and now I'm playtesting D&DNext. Here are my thoughts.
1e (and earlier) had rules which were deceptively complex. Also, they had tons of holes in them -- and unlike the modules from this era, which were full of blank rooms on purpose, the holes in the rules were not intentional. Rules in this era were basically "this stuff worked in my game", where the game in question was the one played by the author. "Mordenkeinen", for example, was the name of a PC in one of Gary's games. People who love this era of D&D seem to like the fact that you were forced to "make the game your own" by writing house-rules.
The problem, of course, is that every group basically played a different game. It's difficult to compare 1e to other editions, because MY 1e was necessarily different from pretty much every other 1e out there, in terms of rules we added, which options we included, and which rules we ignored.
2e was in many ways the golden age for settings. This was the edition which saw Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and my personal favorite setting: Planescape. They simplified the rules, throwing away a lot of the nuance of 1e, like using THAC0 instead of the original curved attack roll tables. (You might call this type of rules simplification "dumbing down" if you dislike it; people have done exactly that for years when talking about edition changes. I bring this up here to point out the fact that rules simplification has been around since the day that there was more than one edition, and people have used the "dumbing down" argument since forever.)
They also used different rules for different settings, and of course people changed those rules to reflect their ideas about those settings. My Ravenloft was probably different from yours, which means that it's difficult to compare even 2e rules across games, even though 2e rules were more complete than 1e.
3e was the first edition where the rules could be played without modification, through all 20 levels. It codified everything, and for the first time it was possible to play a game with just the "core rules". This edition also coincided with the availability of the Internet, so people were able to discuss the rules -- and dissect the holes in the rules -- far more rapidly and easily than ever before. We saw an explosion of options for players and DMs alike. Rules for henchmen, followers, and strongholds were codified in the Leadership feat; expected wealth-per-level was written down to allow PCs to start above 1st level; rules for parties of mixed level playing together which allowed lower-level PCs to catch up; and rules for playing a huge assortment of races, classes, and monster types. On the DM side, rules for monster customization (via class levels and templates) and guidelines for creating fun, challenging encounters were presented.
For the first time, everyone knew all the rules, and many people were playing by the same rules. It was actually possible to discuss the impact of specific rules on a game, and people started to think about what the rules should support. 3e was a codification of all the nuances from earlier editions, and having all the rules in a coherent framework showed many of the flaws which were previously glossed over, like how utterly broken the spells haste, heal and harm were.
In many ways, 3.5e was more radical than 3e, because 3.5e was the edition where sacred cows started to be sacrificed on the altar of more consistent rules. Haste was nerfed (just like it was nerfed in BG2); heal was nerfed to heal 10 hp/level, up to 150 hp; and so on. Fighters got better feats, damage reduction was reduced to allow non-optimal weapon choices to be more valid, and martial "maneuver users" were introduced which used spell-like mechanics to remain relevant in high-level combat. But in the big picture, none of those were particularly radical. Spell-using melee-types had been around since OD&D Elves; spells had been changed before.
In my humble opinion, the most radical thing 3.5e gave to D&D was the Swift Action, and its fraternal twin, the Immediate Interrupt. These snuck in the back door, as it were, as very few of them appear in the core books -- feather fall and Quicken Spell are pretty much the only Swift Actions, and they don't use that terminology at all. Why is this the most radical part of 3.5e? Because interrupt mechanics require so much communication bandwidth, they can't be used in MMOs. Sitting around the table, it's easy to signal that you want to break into a conversation, and your friends will pause to let you speak -- but for a computer game with many players, do you really want to pause EVERY player when ONE of them wants to use an Interrupt power? That would be a terrible MMO. Yep, 3.5e was a radical departure from older editions specifically because it couldn't be implemented well as an MMO.
4e continued that trend, giving Swift and Interrupt powers to every class. It was an emphatically turn-based game, because unlike 3.x, you got ONE main action per round. (3.x allowed fighter types to take multiple attacks at higher levels, and spellcasters had Quicken Spell, swift spells, and probably other options.) Healing was rationed, being the Cleric was made less painful, and party synergy became important. Fighter-types could shape the battlefield in ways which were just as important as magic-slingers, and could make their opponents pay attention to them. (If high-level fighter-types were not ignored in earlier editions, it was due to poor AI or DM pity.)
The the most radical thing about 4e was that the unit of play was the PARTY, not a bunch of PCs each acting separately. When the Leader used her action to make the Ogre easier to hit, she did a little damage, but the party's damage output as a whole would skyrocket if they took her cue and attacked the Ogre. Parties which worked together as a team were far more effective than a bunch of lone-wolf optimized PCs. This was a massive departure from 3.x (and every previous incarnation of D&D), and another way in which D&D was growing to be something difficult to model in an MMO.
5e (D&D Next) looks a lot like 1e did, but with the hind-sight provided by 3.x and 4e. It's not done yet, so it's a bit early to be excited or disappointed, but from my playtesting so far it's got a lot of things pointed in the right direction. There are Reactions ("Immediate Interrupt"s), fighter-types have options beyond "I hit it with my stick", spellcasters are useful at low levels, etc.
I have high hopes for 5e, so that's what's got my vote.
But to play devil's advocate, I wonder how much 4 and 4.5 being low is for the simple reason that many BG players are old school and voting nostalgia. They grew up on 2-3.5 editions and therefore those are 'The best' to them?
To chip in, I started playing with 3rd edition, tried 2nd edition the first time shortly after, and have given 4th edition a try not long after these. I'll admit I haven't actually played 4e for too much, but the other two I have quite a bit experience with, and I have grown to prefer 2e.
I dislike it when people automatically claim liking anything older as "nostalgia goggles" (not pointing at you, @the_spyder). Sure, nostalgia often has a part in these things, small or big, but it's not always just that: the older versions often do have some legitimate good arguments for them, and people can like them for actually good reasons.
Comments
In the later editions, the rules were the god, and the DM became nothing more than their servant.
1a. I'm not sure why you even brought up skill challenges, given skill challenges are just an attempt to organize and codify a challenge that requires more than a single skill check. Skill checks have been around since 3.0, if not earlier. I remember seeing some 2E statblocks with "proficiencies" in things like woodcraft and herbalism, IIRC.
2. Again, power cards are just an organizational tool for a character's abilities. Once-per-encounter, daily, and at-will abilities have been floating around the game forever. And, given that most powers consist of an attack roll and a special effect, the ability to roleplay what happens has not been lost in the least. An attack that deals weapon damage and knocks the target prone can be flavored differently every time you use it.
3. The art and feel of the game, and what they remind you of, are purely subjective. Besides, there's nothing wrong with taking aesthetic inspiration from other media. D&D is clearly inspired greatly by Tolkien, and other, more modern authors have certainly influenced the game as well. 3.5 had The Book of Nine Swords, which was based loosely on swordsmanship in some of the more high-power-level Chinese martial arts movies like The Flying Guillotine or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Just...roleplay that you're a master chef?
DM: "You want to leap off the wall and decapitate the goblin's head? The mage wants to trap the sea serpent within a wall of ice with cone of cold? The evil rogue wants to backstab the other guy, but deal no damage and permamently paralyze him from the waist down? Which ligaments do you cut? If you RP it well, please, PLEASE do it, it will make our game more enjoyable. The outcome may not be what you expect, however" I am well refuted, my opinion is my own. But at least many D&D players that I know agree with me on this point, so my opinion must count for something. Aside the point, the art is clearly a bid to pull in the video game crowd, much like the entire 4th edition.
All IMHO.
The purpose of skills is to do both, flavor characters and solve problems with successful skill checks. A well-designed skill challenge follows the tenet of "fail forward." For example, the party is looking for a specific thief in town. A skill challenge can determine if they find him right away, or if they run into some interesting complications but eventually find him or a clue to his whereabouts afterwards. If you can't do something like that, you're better off just not using a skill challenge, and the DMG will tell you as much.
The powers system doesn't prevent you from doing any of that. What it DOES do is provide you a specific way to accomplish a specific neat thing, even when your DM would not be convinced by your explanation or reasoning. Also, it speeds up the turn. Rather than have to tell the DM every time you want to knock an enemy over, you can just take a power that lets you do that, then you can describe the action however you want. This doesn't somehow make it impossible to improvise. You could take that same power that normally merely knocks enemies prone and say to the DM "Well, considering I've befuddled this ogre into tripping all over himself on such a flimsy bridge, shouldn't he fall through the rotten wood that was barely supporting his weight earlier?" Your DM nods in agreement, and boom, that ogre gets swept down the river or tumbles to his death.
The art in all the books has been designed to draw in those who appreciate visual stimuli. That's nothing new. D&D is also a commercial product, so more customers are a good thing. I don't see the issue in appealing to a group that offers a new customer base. You're on a forum for a video game right now. I was speaking of mechanics, not necessarily roleplay. I never said I defined who my characters are by their abilities. Sure, you can play a character with a different personality, but what if you want his fighting style to be completely different from the last guy you made, but like the stats and the equipment choice? I like to know that my guy can sacrifice accuracy for damage and use the Power Attack feat because that's his style of fighting. I like to be able to build a Barbarian that focuses on grappling and can wrestle a chimera to the ground with his bare hands. It's the same as choosing a different repertoire of spells from a Wizard to Wizard. It adds flavor and the potential for radically different playstyles.
One of the original D&D playtesters gives his insight:
Please. In the original "vision" of D&D it was just a tactical war game on a smaller scale. All this roleplaying, immersive storytelling, and getting attached to our characters we've been talking about? These things baffled Gygax when he first heard players were doing them. It was designed as a simulationist game first and foremost. Really, D&D was an attempt to make a video game that simulated Conan or LOTR before there were video games.
Regardless, what you have just now posted is not an argument. I had an answer for each of the things you said are 'wrong with' 4E. You haven't refuted any of those points. Don't condescend to me, telling me I have a "right" to my playstyle, but that it isn't the "right" playstyle.
To me, the game is best when it's facilitating the story I want to tell. What I dislike about the later rules (too much structure, too much rigidness, and especially not enough randomness) seems to be exactly what you do want. That's just completely different styles of play. And that's fine, even among my friends who love 2E we often had very different styles and strengths as DMs and players. I often partnered with one friend who excelled at deeper stories but disliked characters and game management. We designed some fun adventures together, but had a hard time actually playing in each others games.
Way back in 1.5-2 era, you had a set limited set of abilities. You had nothing but your imagination to flesh out characters. so if you wanted to specialize in one form of attack or another, you had that ability, you just didn't have a bunch of rules shoehorning you into that way. What you describe above are all crutches built into the 'Newer' rules sets such that you don't have to imagine them. You have rules around them.
As for worrying that a DM might not accord you the ability to dodge out of the way of a fireball, that is 100% between you and the DM. They are supposed to create worlds and provide challenges, not 'Do in the player-characters' in an adversarial manner. My DM was always looking for interesting and inventive ways for the party to succeed. Now, admittedly he could be quite the tyrant when his rulings were challenged, but he was always fair.
At the end of the day, both systems 'Work' and no one is denying that. However, none of what you say makes the newer systems superior is lacking in the older systems, except rigid structure and crutches.
All IMHO.
You seem to have misunderstood me. My point was that @_N8_ was suggesting that D&D was originally about story and roleplay, and that later editions (or apparently just 4E) have failed to live up to that legacy. I originally pointed out that 4E more than complements literary play, house rules, and improvization (in fact it provides some tables to make improvization faster and involve less guesswork), and then reminded him/her that Gygax originally planned the game as a simulation, and not a storytelling medium, as I can tell you are aware. I was not advocating that Gygax's approach was correct, only that _N8_ did not have his facts straight about that approach.
We'll have to agree to disagree on how "rigid" later editions are. Players are capable of conjuring up insane plans and daring maneuvers regardless of the Edition.
My points was that feats allow you to do cool stuff without DM intervention. The guy with Improved Grapple is always better at grappling, while the guy without it has to improvise and cast a Grease spell on his clothes to make him more slippery, or something. Both approaches are cool in their own way, I appreciate both static mechanics and improvisational mechanics, and both can be used in the same Edition, the same campaign, and the same individual game session. I just like to be able to define neat stuff my character can ALWAYS do, regardless of whether or not he has some kind of improvisational tool at hand.
It's nice when the DM says "okay" to you tying a beholder's eyestalks together to limit its eye ray options, but it's also cool to know that your character has that option built-in because he's so awesome at grappling. Probably a bad example, since there will never be a feat that specifically says "You can tie a beholder's eye stalks together," but I hope you see my point.
Further, I never suggested 4E was superior. The goal of my posts has been to illustrate that 4E isn't lacking any of the things the player of older editions claim it has lost. It's still a vehicle for telling great stories about fantastical heroes and villains wielding swords and sorcery.
@_N8_
As I mentioned to spyder above, I've been attempting to address your grievances with 4E. You said it lacks story/roleplay, and I feel I have more than refuted that. You feel powers are pointless because you can always improvise with DM approval what a power can accomplish, and I argue that powers allow you to do cool stuff without necessarily having to improvise or explain to your DM how it works. Instead of addressing my reasoning, you told me my choice of edition is not the right way to play and not "true D&D." That is ridiculous, and certifiably condescending. You don't just prefer your game and playstyle, which would be perfectly acceptable. Instead, you seem to think yours is actually, quantifiably -better- than mine.
Here is a 4e review by one of the best DMs in the world. He presents the review in suuch an absurd and ridiculous way, but it's fitting. It suits the ridiculousness of 4e and our argument.
*the rant ends and the review begins at 5:25
Edit: I don't want my game bogged down with more rules than necessary. Some rules are absolutely essential. Some are less so and should be up to the discretion of the DM, not some rule book. IMHO.
But to play devil's advocate, I wonder how much 4 and 4.5 being low is for the simple reason that many BG players are old school and voting nostalgia. They grew up on 2-3.5 editions and therefore those are 'The best' to them?
People always want to debunk the latest thing.
Then again..... Nah....
"Can I have my character be really good at dealing fire damage?" Vs. "My character is really good at dealing fire damage."
1e (and earlier) had rules which were deceptively complex. Also, they had tons of holes in them -- and unlike the modules from this era, which were full of blank rooms on purpose, the holes in the rules were not intentional. Rules in this era were basically "this stuff worked in my game", where the game in question was the one played by the author. "Mordenkeinen", for example, was the name of a PC in one of Gary's games. People who love this era of D&D seem to like the fact that you were forced to "make the game your own" by writing house-rules.
The problem, of course, is that every group basically played a different game. It's difficult to compare 1e to other editions, because MY 1e was necessarily different from pretty much every other 1e out there, in terms of rules we added, which options we included, and which rules we ignored.
2e was in many ways the golden age for settings. This was the edition which saw Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and my personal favorite setting: Planescape. They simplified the rules, throwing away a lot of the nuance of 1e, like using THAC0 instead of the original curved attack roll tables. (You might call this type of rules simplification "dumbing down" if you dislike it; people have done exactly that for years when talking about edition changes. I bring this up here to point out the fact that rules simplification has been around since the day that there was more than one edition, and people have used the "dumbing down" argument since forever.)
They also used different rules for different settings, and of course people changed those rules to reflect their ideas about those settings. My Ravenloft was probably different from yours, which means that it's difficult to compare even 2e rules across games, even though 2e rules were more complete than 1e.
3e was the first edition where the rules could be played without modification, through all 20 levels. It codified everything, and for the first time it was possible to play a game with just the "core rules". This edition also coincided with the availability of the Internet, so people were able to discuss the rules -- and dissect the holes in the rules -- far more rapidly and easily than ever before. We saw an explosion of options for players and DMs alike. Rules for henchmen, followers, and strongholds were codified in the Leadership feat; expected wealth-per-level was written down to allow PCs to start above 1st level; rules for parties of mixed level playing together which allowed lower-level PCs to catch up; and rules for playing a huge assortment of races, classes, and monster types. On the DM side, rules for monster customization (via class levels and templates) and guidelines for creating fun, challenging encounters were presented.
For the first time, everyone knew all the rules, and many people were playing by the same rules. It was actually possible to discuss the impact of specific rules on a game, and people started to think about what the rules should support. 3e was a codification of all the nuances from earlier editions, and having all the rules in a coherent framework showed many of the flaws which were previously glossed over, like how utterly broken the spells haste, heal and harm were.
In many ways, 3.5e was more radical than 3e, because 3.5e was the edition where sacred cows started to be sacrificed on the altar of more consistent rules. Haste was nerfed (just like it was nerfed in BG2); heal was nerfed to heal 10 hp/level, up to 150 hp; and so on. Fighters got better feats, damage reduction was reduced to allow non-optimal weapon choices to be more valid, and martial "maneuver users" were introduced which used spell-like mechanics to remain relevant in high-level combat. But in the big picture, none of those were particularly radical. Spell-using melee-types had been around since OD&D Elves; spells had been changed before.
In my humble opinion, the most radical thing 3.5e gave to D&D was the Swift Action, and its fraternal twin, the Immediate Interrupt. These snuck in the back door, as it were, as very few of them appear in the core books -- feather fall and Quicken Spell are pretty much the only Swift Actions, and they don't use that terminology at all. Why is this the most radical part of 3.5e? Because interrupt mechanics require so much communication bandwidth, they can't be used in MMOs. Sitting around the table, it's easy to signal that you want to break into a conversation, and your friends will pause to let you speak -- but for a computer game with many players, do you really want to pause EVERY player when ONE of them wants to use an Interrupt power? That would be a terrible MMO. Yep, 3.5e was a radical departure from older editions specifically because it couldn't be implemented well as an MMO.
4e continued that trend, giving Swift and Interrupt powers to every class. It was an emphatically turn-based game, because unlike 3.x, you got ONE main action per round. (3.x allowed fighter types to take multiple attacks at higher levels, and spellcasters had Quicken Spell, swift spells, and probably other options.) Healing was rationed, being the Cleric was made less painful, and party synergy became important. Fighter-types could shape the battlefield in ways which were just as important as magic-slingers, and could make their opponents pay attention to them. (If high-level fighter-types were not ignored in earlier editions, it was due to poor AI or DM pity.)
The the most radical thing about 4e was that the unit of play was the PARTY, not a bunch of PCs each acting separately. When the Leader used her action to make the Ogre easier to hit, she did a little damage, but the party's damage output as a whole would skyrocket if they took her cue and attacked the Ogre. Parties which worked together as a team were far more effective than a bunch of lone-wolf optimized PCs. This was a massive departure from 3.x (and every previous incarnation of D&D), and another way in which D&D was growing to be something difficult to model in an MMO.
5e (D&D Next) looks a lot like 1e did, but with the hind-sight provided by 3.x and 4e. It's not done yet, so it's a bit early to be excited or disappointed, but from my playtesting so far it's got a lot of things pointed in the right direction. There are Reactions ("Immediate Interrupt"s), fighter-types have options beyond "I hit it with my stick", spellcasters are useful at low levels, etc.
I have high hopes for 5e, so that's what's got my vote.
I dislike it when people automatically claim liking anything older as "nostalgia goggles" (not pointing at you, @the_spyder). Sure, nostalgia often has a part in these things, small or big, but it's not always just that: the older versions often do have some legitimate good arguments for them, and people can like them for actually good reasons.