TSR vs WotC?

[Shadow]

Yeah, except for the sucking part.

[Broose the Bear]

TSR.

[Decind]

I voted for TSR.

[Grangarian]

I just finished putting all my original D&D (red and blue box sets) and all my AD&D 1e stuff in comic book covers with backings. Man, I gave TSR a BUNCH of money back in the day! Why? Cause they made stuff that was fun, you did not really need every book, (it was like an addiction to get them though). I bought the new 4 e stuff. Man, how complicated can they make it? I thought 3.5 sucked, but oh man! If I wanted all that crap for my PC's I'd play say play a video game.
I got enough stuff to be 1e until I croak!

Seeing that TSR logo brought back a lot of fond memories.

[mathus]

I do like hearing people's responses. No one seems to be able to make up their mind, is 4th Edition to complicated or to easy?

[Shadow]

Both.

[Niemz]

May 6, 2009 14:33:21 GMT -6 mathus said:

I do like hearing people's responses. No one seems to be able to make up their mind, is 4th Edition to complicated or to easy?

I have not looked into 4E yet, still waiting for your 4E PBMB to start so I can see it in action.

[Stix]

May 6, 2009 15:01:05 GMT -6 Shadow said:

Both.

Agreed. The roleplaying elements have been dumbed down to nothing, while class abilities have been needlessly divided into subcategories and there are countless new rules attached to everything.

[mathus]

May 7, 2009 21:58:30 GMT -6 Stix said:

May 6, 2009 15:01:05 GMT -6 Shadow said:

Both.

Agreed. The roleplaying elements have been dumbed down to nothing, while class abilities have been needlessly divided into subcategories and there are countless new rules attached to everything.

Role-playing elements? What role-playing elements? What rules define how animated your character is? What rules make you choose or not choose what "personality" your chosen character will be?

This argument of "4th Edition killed role-playing" I don't understand. You can role-play in LARP games or White Wolf. Role-playing has NOTHING to do with the mechanics of how combat is resolved.

Now saying that you do not like the way combat is resolved, fine. That is a difference of opinion. But to say role-playing is killed? That I don't understand.

Now as to the complexity of combat rules, I will say this. Last Wednesday, the 6th, my friend brought his roommate over. His roommate has never played D&D. This was his second night. His first night was the night where I DMed and had a pre-rolled cleric for him to play in 3rd Edition. This night was my off-night where I play instead of DM and I had a pre-rolled rogue for him.

It took us about 90 minutes to get him setup and playing with some proficiency in 3rd Edition rules. Within 30 minutes in 4th Edition he was standing shoulder to shoulder with us veterans and having much more fun than looking at his character sheet in confusion.

My thought is, and I certainly may be wrong, have you played or even read the rules of 4th Edition enough to roll up a character? There is a difference between not knowing the rules and calling them complicated, and knowing the rules and still holding on to that opinion.

[Shadow]

I will agree that 3E and 3.5 seemed rather... intricate, to use a nice word. They dummied a few things, such as "high numbers are always good" which was certainly not the case in 2E, but they added half a dozen things that only seemed to confuse players. Now, 2E was confusing for some as well, but mostly because it was all about the math. Figuring THAC0 into attack rolls confused a couple people I knew who were less calculation-inclined, as well as adding up and subtracting bonuses and minuses based on what you were rolling, such as getting a bonus to your STs and your Dex, where one you need to roll over so your bonus goes to your roll and there other you need to roll under so your bonus goes to your stat.

To stop me from rambling more, I'll just short cut to say 4E does seem the easiest to just pick up and play, which I think is what worries some people, that they may have dummied it down a bit too far in order to bring in new players. Personally, I don't have a real bias aside from my experiences with 2E and 3.5 which leans me toward 2E, which can be attributed to the DMs I had for 3.5. I'm up for trying 4E... which, of course, is why I'm waiting for more people to play the damned game on here that Mathus is waiting to run >_<

[TheGratefulNed]

I honestly haven't had the time or inclination to look too closely at 4th. One of the things that I detested about the canon 3/3.5 was their utter obliteration of sense and balance from the Planescape setting.

[Stix]

My gripes are with far more than just rules. Honestly, I think the combat rules are pretty novel and well-streamlined. That is all that I have yet found to say positively about 4e.

One rule I specifically dislike is that of "retraining". At first level, a character gets two at-will powers. No new ones can be learned, but you can forget something you knew to learn something else. This is the only way to get a new at-will power, but can also be used for feats, skills, and other powers.

May 8, 2009 10:25:04 GMT -6 mathus said:

Role-playing elements? What role-playing elements? What rules define how animated your character is? What rules make you choose or not choose what "personality" your chosen character will be?

This argument of "4th Edition killed role-playing" I don't understand. You can role-play in LARP games or White Wolf. Role-playing has NOTHING to do with the mechanics of how combat is resolved.

Exactly. And that's all I see in the 4e books: instructions on how to build encounters and roll dice to get through them. Lists of rules for how to roll dice for social encounters.

It just looks to me like someone took the code tags out of a video game design.

May 8, 2009 10:25:04 GMT -6 mathus said:

Now saying that you do not like the way combat is resolved, fine. That is a difference of opinion. But to say role-playing is killed? That I don't understand.

Not killed, just dumbed-down to attract an audience with little interest in character interaction or development. I'll admit that this may be a biased opinion, as the last... we'll say couple dozen gaming books I've picked up have been from White Wolf, and they're notorious for focusing on character concepts rather than monster bashing. Still, I feel like 2e's main sourcebooks had more roleplaying substance.

The new alignment system is ridiculous. Law and chaos have been reduced to "extra good" or "extra evil". The alignment section begins with the phrase "If you choose an alignment".

WotC's argument for changing alignment? "We didn't like that in 3.5, having an alignment was more of a weakness. If you were Good, you took extra damage from Evil."

Gee, WotC, who wrote it that way?

May 8, 2009 10:25:04 GMT -6 mathus said:

My thought is, and I certainly may be wrong, have you played or even read the rules of 4th Edition enough to roll up a character? There is a difference between not knowing the rules and calling them complicated, and knowing the rules and still holding on to that opinion.

The terminology is the complicated part. It's a totally needless obstruction.

The structure of the game and its rules reminds me of Diablo II, WoW, and any of a number of MMORPGs (the very audience they're gunning for, most of whom they won't get due to the lack of graphics and pwnage). Christ, the game has an ending, now: at level 30, you fight the big boss and the campaign is over.

Classes have been assigned roles so everyone knows how to make a balanced party. Solo adventures? Not a chance! That's like playing the game without an internet connection!

The DM's job is shown as an exercise in simple math: how many levels of PCs? Here's how many levels of challenges to use against them! Is that trap considered a Warder, a Lurker, a Blaster, or an Obstacle? It's the way they tell you to run the game that really got me irked at 4e in the first place.

Further, the rules are far less important to me than the setting -- it's the reason I'm a Planescape fan. They changed the multiverse in 3.X, and I was pissed. The Astral and Ethereal are the high and low roads that get you anywhere. Elysium is just so good that it eats your soul.

But at least the Great Ring was still there. Now, we have a gaping elemental toilet.

I'm interested in trying the 4e rules, but the setting is an enormous turnoff, along with the whole flavor of the game.

[Shadow]

...a gaping elemental toilet.

I just have to point out how awesome this phrase is. Seriously, nice.

[Niemz]

They completely butchered Planescape with 3 & 4E.

[mathus]

May 9, 2009 10:13:43 GMT -6 Stix said:

One rule I specifically dislike is that of "retraining". At first level, a character gets two at-will powers. No new ones can be learned, but you can forget something you knew to learn something else. This is the only way to get a new at-will power, but can also be used for feats, skills, and other powers.

Where you see a disadvantage, I see a great new feature. And I don't mind "meta-gaming" this to make it work. And before anyone says, "How do you just forget something?" I have had four years of Spanish and two years of Russian. I know maybe 40-60 words of Spanish and two words in Russian. Of course that was over 15 years ago but still, you can forget a skill you once had.

Granted the forget and learn process in D&D is greatly exaggerated but then so isn't leveling? A character picks up that second level of wizard pretty damn fast considering it would take a backstory of about 5 years (starting age differences) from a base starting character yet the fighter learned out to be a mage over the period of a day or so.

I just find it nice that they wrote in rules for post-creation modification and yet there is always rule zero. The DM makes the rules and if you think re-training is a game/disbelief/rule breaker you just let your players know that you don't allow it. Out of the 10 4th Edition characters me and my friends have played (only up to third level at this point) I will be using my first re-training on my new wizard because I found some of our parties skills overlap and I wanted to make sure someone in the party had the diplomacy skill for social encounters.

May 9, 2009 10:13:43 GMT -6 Stix said:

May 8, 2009 10:25:04 GMT -6 mathus said:

Role-playing elements? What role-playing elements? What rules define how animated your character is? What rules make you choose or not choose what "personality" your chosen character will be?

This argument of "4th Edition killed role-playing" I don't understand. You can role-play in LARP games or White Wolf. Role-playing has NOTHING to do with the mechanics of how combat is resolved.

Exactly. And that's all I see in the 4e books: instructions on how to build encounters and roll dice to get through them. Lists of rules for how to roll dice for social encounters.

This statement is true for the DMG. The DMG was written to teach new DMs how to be a DM. All magic items, combat rules, and everything you need to know how to "play" is in the Player's Handbook. The encounter building, party crafting, and wold making stuff is in the DM where it teaches you how to "run" a game.

Now the only defined "rules" for social encounters is skill challenges. I don't completely understand what WotC was trying to do with that idea and many 4th Edition DMs still find them confusing in the way that we are not sure what Wizards was trying to accomplish with them and how exactly is a skill challenge run. Summed up, they are supposed to be a collection of skill checks by all party members to accomplish a long reaching social challenge. Nobody is really sure where to use them or how so like most DMs, my DM and I have left them out. Every so often I will re-read the rules and try to understand them but I am only at half comprehension on them yet. (So there is my biggest complaint about 4th Edition. But I just play rule zero, "No rule shall get in the way of fun and I have the power to nix or re-write any rule I want."

But it is the end of day. I will go through the rest of post tomorrow.