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Oct 3, 2011 -- 9:23PM, beholdergaze wrote:

4th edition does for combat what T2 did for action flicks: it's exciting, it has great scenes, and it's just plain awesome. Even so, I'm not going to pop in T2 if I want to watch a movie with my wife. For that i'd rather watch Pulp Fiction, Batman Begins, or LOTR. They have action but they also have deeper stories and excellent character development. Similarly, 4th edition doesn't have every element, balanced, that I think a role playing game should contain. It's not the complete experience.  

Um... what.


You argument does not make a lick of sense. What aspects of the 4E rule set are missing to tell a story with both action and character devolpement. If a PC has a profession pastry chef score of 4 at first level and the score increase to 7 at 3rd level is that the kind of system support for character development you are speaking of?

If you are saying that the 4E system is unable to provide non-house rules, non-hand waved, non rule zero support to run something like LOTR, that is just false. 

Here are a few examples


1) Rules for Gandalf to conduct research into the history and nature of the one ring (history, religion,  and arcana skill checks).

2) Rules for a prolonged chase where the halflings try to hide from, evade, misdirect, out run and use their knowledge of the local area to escape from the ring wraiths. (skill challenge incorporating several skills).

3) Convince the White Council to allow Frodo to take the ring to Mordor (diplomacy check or skill chalenge).


And so on and so forth. There is plenty of system support for these and other non-combat related conflicts.

Granted 4E does not have a very robust system for adjudicating very mundane tasks that don't have to do with the driving conflict of the story. However I don't remember much time or focus in either the novel or film being given to how exactly skilled Sam was at gardening or how much money Merry or Pippen could make if they decided to open a pipe weed shop.  

Oct 3, 2011 -- 9:23PM, beholdergaze wrote:

No matter what you think about 3rd edition and Crapper, at least they tried.

Matrial Practices do everything CraPPer did except give you free money.

Being able to allocate skill points and say you're better at this than that guy

What?  So CraPPer was the equivalenet of being abele to drop trou and compare relative skill lengths?  And that's a benefit?

If you want to know who is better you engage in a competition.  You have a bake-off or some equally silly premise.  Two blacksmiths comparing one another's art don't simply ask each other for a list of skill ranks.  In fact, most blacksmiths wouldn't care about that crap.

Arrg.  You played 2e.  you should know better.  But 3e has created it's own reality distinct from any fantasy trope that existed before or outside the game.  And people have bought into this weird little world where people run around with easily recognizable dots in esoteric skills and think this is useful or heaven forfend "realistic".

It's one thing to believe this because you grabbed 3e when you were an impressionable adolescent and d20 rules allowed you to replace a scary unquantifiable outside reality with an easily understandable and quantifiable math equation.  But for goodness sakes man, you played 2e!  You know that the game never needed that level of granularity, and that level of granularity isn't realistic or based in fantasy tropes of any sort.

The fact that 4th edition tries so bleeding hard to make combat great and balanced makes some of us wonder why they left everything else out.

They didn't.  It's all right there!

Critic: 4e sucks because they don't let you make stuff.
Supporter: Martial practices does.
Critic: You know in 3e you could make stuff.
Supporter: You can.  It's right here.
Critic: Why on earth does 4e not include rules for this?
Supporter: Look.  I've got the page open to it.  It's right here.
Critic: In my day, we had rules for stuff like this.
Supporter: I'm highlighting the paragraph right here.
Critic: It's just sad.  People want these things.  4e is missing out.
Supporter: Hold on.  I'm getting my overhead projector so I can splash it on that wall....

It's 2011.  Why are people still treating the game like it was etched in stone in 2008 and hasn't released anything since. 

Oct 4, 2011 -- 5:48AM, wrecan wrote:

So CraPPer was the equivalenet of being abele to drop trou and compare relative skill lengths? 

Quote of the day, hands down.