I’m closing comments for good here, since any further comments would be about the final 4e, which is not what this post is about. If you’d like to discuss 4e, I recommend seeking out one of the more current topics on our homepage. Thank you.

We have had (and continue to have) good dicsussions with the pro and con side both represented. The fact I got pissed off has nothing to do with his opinions.

It has fully to do with the way he stated those opinions, and how he stated that we were wrong for not believing that. It is even more grounded in the fact that Vesavius had the gall to tell us how we “should” be feeling about this thing.

I’ll debate any topic I have an opinion on. I’ll argue with someone who disagrees with me until we’re both blue in the face, and then I’ll buy him a beer.

But I will not tolerate someone telling someone else what they should be thinking.

And if that somehow makes me a “fanboi”…

Hell, I’m not even remotely upset about his opinion about 4e. I don’t know how that makes me a “fanboi”.

Your criticisms are in no way relevant to the post at hand. You are stating an untenable position in “4e is not D&D.” (Fact: It is.) You present your opinions as fact and in a condescending way. Even in your reply post, you are insulting, telling us that we’re getting ripped off, yet you have not made the case for such.

Had you been the first to do so, I might have decided to take a higher road. But the fact of the matter is that I’m sick of people stopping in, making sweeping declarations about why WotC is evil and how 3.5 is better.

I run this blog to share my opinions, and enjoy discussing them with people who want to have a reasonable discussion. Even those who disagree with me usually end up being fairly reasonable. But when someone comes along and states the same old tired “WotC wants to abuse its customers” and similar paranoia, I find that they’re not worth discussing with. Seriously, why the hell do you put your inflammatory opinions in a public place and get offended when people respond in kind?

To answer your one salient point: 1e to 2e didn’t work as a conversion without heavy work. 2e to 3e didn’t work as a conversion without heavy work. 3e to 3.5e was the easiest to translate concepts, certainly, but after trying to run it I found that 3e stuff still required work to translate (work that could be spent actually planning and playing) and I was better off just using 3.5 stuff exclusively without having to worry if the damage reduction was different or the classes were in line power-wise.

Hell, 3.0 to 3.5 could be considered much more of a money grab! Buy all new books to get the same classes, the same races! At least with 4e, I know I’m buying a new game, which is much easier to justify spending money for.

Have fun with Pathfinder. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of players who agree with you there. Good thing there’s different games for those of us who don’t feel like they should be angry, right?

EDIT: Nice job calling us “fanbois” in an edit and once again proving our point that you’re not worth arguing with. I think if you actually bothered to look around the site, or even really read this post, you’ll find that I’m in no way a blind adopter and lay out both pros and cons of 4e.

“You should be angry at that.”

Do NOT tell me how to feel! Do NOT tell me what I should be angry at!

There is absolutely nothing I “should be” angry at!

And this alone tells me you aren’t worth arguing with.

Well.. I am sorry that you cannot control your anger in order to discuss something rather then yell and hissy fit like this. This alone tells me also that you arnt worth discussing anything with.

And, yes, are are angry at entirely the wrong thing. You are angry because someone on the interweb tells you that you should care about being ripped off, yet you are happy to be ripped off?

/sigh… fanbois…

ok…

I had no idea you were so sensitive.

3.5 wasnt 80% compatable with the old one? It didnt only require a minimum of tweaking to work with my 3e stuff?

really?

Try again?

Wow, you both went to personal insults and tantrums really really fast.

And ‘The Game’… Why the hell do you post public blogs and opinions if you are really so sensitive about this?? You put your opinions in a public place, and you treat those that dare respond like worthless crap that you cant be arsed with?

I didnt attack you, or your work. Quite the opposite. I just dared to mention an aspect of 4e that bothers me deeply and that will stop me purchasing it.

Really guys, why so angry?

I think it’s you both that need to take a step back and get some clarity.

“You should be angry at that.”

Do NOT tell me how to feel! Do NOT tell me what I should be angry at!

There is absolutely nothing I “should be” angry at!

And this alone tells me you aren’t worth arguing with.

Graham’s last post: Final thoughts after marathon 4e release day events

Theres always a ‘but’ right?

You fail to touch upon the most grating issue, to me at least.

Backwards comapatability.

IMO, if we are talking about bringing new players into the game, there is *nothing* 4e achieves in it’s wiped clean slate approach that could not have been achieved with revising and streamlining the current base rules, while still keeping the system backwards compatiable. The truth is though that they would have made waaay less money that way right?

Non compatibility was a deliberate bussiness descision. One made at your expense. You should be angry at that.

I won’t throw out over £600 worth of WotC rule books because someone tells me grapple is too hard (which, for the record, it isnt. It’s actually easy). I do not find 3.5 ‘hard’ personally, but then I am not afraid to read a book and learn a few rules.

With regards to 4e’s much touted ’simplicity’… Give it 2 years and it will be every bit as ‘bloated’ as 3.5 is, and then they will use that as an excuse to sell you an even simpler and even more DungeonQuest like 4.5… The nature of the game demands expansions to generate revenue, so why you all don’t think this will be true with 4e is confusing.

I will not be sold a new game, that I didnt ask for, simply because WotC need to sell more books and minis to bring their profits up to what Hasbro’s board demands them to be. I am not even gonna go into ‘insider’ here… The whole drive to wring every last penny out of the customer base is sickening to me.

4e is not D&D.

It is a *brand new* RPG that has been simply branded D&D to sell copies. This dosent make it ‘bad’, it just means that it casts off just too much of the core game system that I enjoy for me to buy into it.

I personally will be sticking with 3.5 and Pathfinder to get the game engine I want.

Honestly, though, this game may not end up being for you, which is fine. 3e wasn’t for everyone either. d20 Modern is one of my favourite systems, anyways.

You mention that the main audience for 4e is the people who already play. Perhaps at first. But not attempting to bring in new blood is a good way to ensure that your company dies (just as the old blood does eventually).

(By the way, “most” of the older players have not been disappointed. Those that are are the most vocal, of course, and enworld has a disproportionate amount of naysayers. But from my experience, the reaction has been largely positive, especially after playing it. I don’t think WotC has anything to worry about.)

Oh, and that Skritz rant? Holy crap, I couldn’t even listen to that. Aside from his inability to form complete, coherent sentences, when he did form them, most of what he was saying was such uninformed bile that I had to turn it off.

Graham’s last post: Final thoughts after marathon 4e release day events

On the plus side, the system does look like it’s a lot easier on the brain. Maybe it really will draw in new players, though I doubt it. With all the options for games out there, the main audience for this one is people who already played. And most of them so far as I can tell are disappointed. At this point in time, the odds are very real that it may go the way of the dinosaur, where no one wants the books and Wotc stops making them.

I opted to give 4E a try, and told my players about test-running the game, and they all sneered and told me that they were going to be extremely cynical. I can’t blame them, but i’m still going to try to amaze them and give it my very best shot.

So, what i’m going to do is throw together a classic 1st level adventure (they all meet in a tavern, LOL. prey on their nostalgia)

I’ll create a village and a nearby kobold lair for them to explore. I’ll really try to impress them, lol. But after that, it’s all up to vote.

If they vote 4E down, we’re jumping into a d20 modern apocalyptic campaign to experience the zombie take-over of the world, Dawn of the Dead style ^_^.

Which is not necessarily bad. There’s other modern stuff out there that is super cool. But I saw a hilarious rant on youtube about 4E, look for skritz rant 4th edition review. Nails it right on the head.

But alas, if people like this, and are having fun with it, then by all means!! There’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s wonderful that’s how you play D&D, and what you consider D&D to be. But saying things like “it’s not a miniatures game” and that you only play D&D “right when rules fall into the background” are not true for everyone. It is one style of play.

When I played Lejendary Adventures with Gary Gygax, he used miniatures, combat maps, and plenty of rules. The same is true when he ran OD&D that same weekend. Like it or not, preferred style or not, there’s plenty of precedent for the kind of D&D that you seem to be decrying as incorrect.

I have played plenty of RPGs that were more immersive, were more about roleplaying and storytelling, and so on. I have played hours and hours of roleplaying without any rules at all to the extent that it could no longer be called a game. But that’s not how I play D&D. Neither of us are necessarily more correct. However, the new edition of D&D, to me, is a great balance between tactical combats, interesting decisions, storytelling, and roleplaying. Your experience may be different, but asserting that your playstyle is “correct” is not a useful way to look at it all.

It’s just that, one of the things that made the other editions beautiful was the level of detail they put into the descriptions, ecologies, and places. The books have very little of that.

Still, if I can bring old-school life to 3rd, maybe I can for 4? Sad to say, it’s getting harder and harder.

Dungeons & Dragons is not a miniatures game. It is a game where the players try to imagine what they see, and the experience is largely in the player’s mind. With something to see, and references and effects that cause game pieces to move certain numbers of squares and all sorts of things like that, it detracts from the experience greatly.

Often, especially in 3rd, I did use the miniatures rules to play out some damn awesome combats. But even then, my group is pretty hardcore… we let the rules fall into the background and don’t refer to them too much during play. We wrote very short references for spells and things on index cards, to the point where we eventually could do everything from memory. grappling, trip attacks, ect.

But basically, the action was described as though straight out of a book, with very little reference to squares or penalties. (it was always still there, but my point is, in D&D your playing it right if the rules fade into the background.) Live in the imagination.

How am I going to do that now? In 4E, they don’t give explanations for their rules or any comparison to reality. Things work THIS way because the rules say so, and that’s it.

It’s going to be a lot harder. Do you get my meaning? I still may try it, but my aim is for imagination, and the way these rules are built, it won’t be very easy to see with the mind’s eye.

If you want non-combat spells, you should have kept reading past the half-way point: the rituals in the PHB are exactly what you’re asking for. But if you want old school thousands of spells, available only to a few character classes, each with their own set of exceptions and pains, 4e is not going to be for you.

And I’ve had 0 problems explaining healing surges, and 0 complaints at the table. Hit points don’t make sense anyway.

“Suddenly you catch a second wind, and, though bloodied and battle-scarred, you shake off your injuries and fight on!”……….. That’s the best I can do. Healing surges suck.

1st and 2nd had a feel to them, like a classic fantasy novel. It felt like true fantasy. I have fond memories of them.

3rd edition and 3.5 didn’t have that feeling. The art was more flashy, the monster descriptions were more brief, and so on. SO, while I did approach the whole system optimistically, I felt It was up to me to bring about that old-style feeling in play, and I was able to do it with a bit of work. A lot of times I even relied on 2nd edition material for detailing monster ecologies and things.

I love 3rd, it’s wonderful, and it runs so nicely (though keeping a balanced game is harder).

Half-way through the 4th edition book, I put it down. I didn’t even finish it. I mean, I WANT TO LIKE IT, but there seems to be no flexibility at all.

So, every single rogue is a striker now? Every fighter is a defender? With abilities that they can use every round?

But my biggest complaint is the spell-casting classes. I am accustomed to having virtually THOUSANDS of spells available to give my players, that do TONS of different and unique things. They could scry in a dungeon pool, reverse gravity, stop time, create invisible mansions on extrademensional planes of existence, ect.
Seems now everything is for combat, which is only one part of a beautiful fantasy world to explore.