Yes, it is relevant, it doesnt necessarily make it true though. As I've seen it been called before, its sort of a Narrativistic vs Simulationist thing.
If I were to survey the same group on if they prefered coke or pepsi's taste, could I go into a thread say Pepsi does tend to taste bad?
We summoned a devil once. All we used was the D&D books, too. It was pretty kwazy.
God of Arrested Development and Intelligence Resident Left Hand of Stalin and Banana Stand Grandstander Pie-Cooling-On-A-Windowsill of the House of Trolls In the morning HK'll be sober but you'll still be a meatbag. I know I misspell "Danke" in my posts. It's an inside joke. "Ten cents gets you nuts." -George Michael Spoiler:Show
''Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening.'' —Bill Clinton
You are not a moral man. There are not enough middle fingers in the world for you.
"Heroes"...I wish I had those. I remember in my first-ever campaign one PC went around shootin all the unconscious baddies in the head to gain Dark Side Points...
Whaaaaaat?!??
Wow...way to waste perfectly good potential slaves.
Er...no wait I mean..uh...something not evil!
(Quotes screwed up on the next one, won't give the poster's name. It's in the Best Lines thread on the D&D forum)
First, an experience from a game I played in a few years back. Our DM didn't like 3.5 as a whole but liked parts of it. So he hands us a big ass rules packet for his modified FR campaign, complete with quotes from important NPC's on the front. I can't remember most of the HRs, just that some how gods like Cyric and Bhaal existed at the same time, despite the obvious problems there. In the end the game became a problem more because of the railroading than the HRs, but it ended with this classic line, after our ranger tried to disarm the strange woman following us WITH HIS BOW: DM: You just killed (insert random noble sounding name here) JP: Was she important? Jack: Dude, she's quoted on the front of the rules packet!
"Why in the wide,wide, world of all things irrational would I help you? -Daniel Jackson "Fun will now commence." -Seven of Nine
Cut the last encounter on your way out after dealing with the Darth. He's the BBEG. Treat him as such. Play up that Darth Revan is THAT much of a badarse. When the shuttle landed, I had no less than 13 JEDI MASTERS step off the shuttle. The PCs were slack-jawed. After the meetup with Bastila (as she's carrying Revan's body), only TWO jedi masters remained with her. Let me tell you, the player whining about not getting to fight Revan himself shut up pretty quickly when he saw that.
1. Cleric cast protection from fire on Tank. 2. Tank goes in and get surrounded by enemies. 3. Wizard cast fireball and blows them up. 4. ??? 5. Profit
I go by the saying," If it ain't friendly fire then it's not working."
The thing is, crunch devoted to roleplaying limits roleplaying a helluva lot more then it encourages it. Take alignment, for example.
Exactly ,its different groups.
And one reason why a larger percentage of the fan base seems to think a certain way is because that portion of the fanbase has been cattered to longer.
It's a subjective issue, so I can readily accept anyone's viewpoint that 4e hasn't reduced (or has even enhanced) the amount of role-playing they do.
But I also know that a large amount of players (and many of the writers) have stated otherwise. Even if I'm speaking anecdotally about my own groups and players I've talked to... it's still a pretty large sampling (I run two regular, long running games, play in another, participate in many public games, and am active in conventions, local events and LFR). The number of players that have an issue with this is statistically relevant even if one's own group does not.
By that metric(the metric of "but a lot of people think so") we should be putting much more serious inquiry into whether the moon landing was faked and whether or not aliens built the sphinx.
My point is that if large numbers of people are good at something, it's grabbing an idea and holding on to it, not actually evaluating the truth or falsehood of that idea.
Seriously, though, you should check out the PbP Haven. You might also like Real Adventures, IF you're cool.
Knights of W.T.F.- Silver Spur Winner
4enclave, a place where 4e fans can talk 4e in peace.
If I were to survey the same group on if they prefered coke or pepsi's taste, could I go into a thread say Pepsi does tend to taste bad?
I think it's fair to make a blanket statement that mechanics tend to influence roleplaying.
I think it's also fair to say that a statistically valid portion of players* have experienced reduced roleplaying in 4e. This implies an overall reduction (i.e. "RP'ing is more difficult in 4e"), even if other groups experienced no reductions... unless possibly one contends that other groups have significantly increased their RP'ing in 4e?
(* a majority from the samples I've been exposed to, but I'm open to the idea that those results are not typical)
It's a subjective issue, so I can readily accept anyone's viewpoint that 4e hasn't reduced (or has even enhanced) the amount of role-playing they do.
But I also know that a large amount of players (and many of the writers) have stated otherwise. Even if I'm speaking anecdotally about my own groups and players I've talked to... it's still a pretty large sampling (I run two regular, long running games, play in another, participate in many public games, and am active in conventions, local events and LFR). The number of players that have an issue with this is statistically relevant even if one's own group does not.
By that metric(the metric of "but a lot of people think so") we should be putting much more serious inquiry into whether the moon landing was faked and whether or not aliens built the sphinx.
Is that what you got from the sources I mentioned? That hardly seems like a fair and accurate assessment.
My point is that if large numbers of people are good at something, it's grabbing an idea and holding on to it, not actually evaluating the truth or falsehood of that idea.
You don't know me or my background in D&D... but I believe it to be both deep and unbiased. In these forums I tend to be the voice of acceptance towards all viewpoints. See the rules Q&A forum FAQ and the Gamma World FAQ for examples. I always try to use consensus (i.e. majority) answers, even when they go against my own thoughts on the matter. Indeed, I love it when I learn something new or find out about a new majority preference.
However, your above reply does not seem to reflect the same sort of openess to me.
a large amount of players (and many of the writers) have stated otherwise.
Citing one source as an example: 'As they begin this new project, Wizards staff are acutely aware of how changes can go wrong; The fourth edition rules, released in 2008, upset many long-time players, who felt it borrowed too heavily from online RPGs like Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, pushing creative play aside in favor of repetitive combat.
“With fourth edition, there was a huge focus on mechanics,” says Mearls. “The story was still there, but a lot of our customers were having trouble getting to it.”
“In some ways, it was like we told people, ‘The right way to play guitar is to play thrash metal,’” says Mearls. “But there’s other ways to play guitar.”
This time around, Wizards doesn’t want to make the same mistake.'
WotC (and Mike Mearls) have access to the greatest amount of player feedback out there. Far more than any of us.
Your argument continues to be "a lot of people think this, so they must be right". I do not agree, I think a lot of people can be wrong, and further more, I think they are wrong on this.
You're right that I do not know you, or your background in D&D, though I don't think it's particularly relevant to this argument. There's no amount of years spent playing or amount of just being a nice guy that would make me agree with you where I otherwise would not. And you're right that I am not showing the same openness toward this viewpoint that you are. I do not automatically respect every viewpoint that I'm shown, especially when it isn't so much an opinion as an attempt to state fact. If someone can sit down, give me some rational arguments and evidence as to why this might be the case, something that can hold up to a bit of debate, something beyond anecdotal groupthink or an appeal to authority, then I'll consider it, but not until then.
Seriously, though, you should check out the PbP Haven. You might also like Real Adventures, IF you're cool.
Knights of W.T.F.- Silver Spur Winner
4enclave, a place where 4e fans can talk 4e in peace.
Ah, the 10,000,000 ants can't be wrong theory. Then why does ant-bait work?
Consider how many people belong to/vote along the lines of a political party or religion. Sure, millions can be wrong. (doesn't matter which one, as they all insist that all the others are wrong)
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what I create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
Bow down, my subjects, for I am your master! Yesss.....Show
a large amount of players (and many of the writers) have stated otherwise.
Citing one source as an example: 'As they begin this new project, Wizards staff are acutely aware of how changes can go wrong; The fourth edition rules, released in 2008, upset many long-time players, who felt it borrowed too heavily from online RPGs like Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, pushing creative play aside in favor of repetitive combat.
“With fourth edition, there was a huge focus on mechanics,” says Mearls. “The story was still there, but a lot of our customers were having trouble getting to it.”
“In some ways, it was like we told people, ‘The right way to play guitar is to play thrash metal,’” says Mearls. “But there’s other ways to play guitar.”
This time around, Wizards doesn’t want to make the same mistake.'
WotC (and Mike Mearls) have access to the greatest amount of player feedback out there. Far more than any of us.
Irrelevant, WotC is renowned for ignoring feedback. Mearls wants to make 4e more like 2/3.x because 1. He personally is not good at tactical combat and mechanical optimization, and 2. Hasbro/Marketing tells him that he will make more money by hedging the grogs back to d&d from pathfinder and other ogl games.
"4e D&D has no roleplaying" is entirely a marketing construct initiated by Paizo and the "I HATE CHANGE" 3.x supporters (who complained about 3.x when it came out to replace 2e), and WotC has since so-opted it as rationale for Next, even though it was their failure to market 4e's superior combat play and thus a reduction in the RP:Combat per session as a major selling point to draw in the wargamer audience, as well as their failure to publish respectable fluff to go with 4e - PoL is essentially Fluff-less, and they killed off all the major plots people knew in Faerun. While 4e has a much better platform for building your characters character, there's little structural support. By which I mean that in a home campaign it's more difficult to tie your character into the story, it's more difficult to say that your character fought at the Battle of the Trarg against the Ovinomancer and are a member of the Golden Keys, if you don't know that any of those things actually existed, and new DMs aren't going to be as able to just randomly work that into their world on the fly. The structural support of History and tools that hold good roleplayers and experienced DMs back (and they'll break them when convenient, ex. Spellcasting Refluffs) are rather necessary for new groups to develop character immersion, Themes help a lot, but were added far too late to dispell the No RP myth.
I love the "no RP" discussions though, it reveals the fakes in the Roleplayer crowd, the people who just like to come up with backstories for their mary sue and wallow their way through both rp and combat encounters, only coming up with "that cool thing their character did" to tell their friends about a couple days later like some juvenile comeback after a schoolyard fight. Not that everyone is like this, others just have some absurd stigma about being good at combat OR rp and not being able to mix them (there's actually a thread about rolled stats vs point buy where several people claim rolling is better because it gives you the chance to roleplay as a character that isn't a bada**, as if the two were remotely connected). It is impossible to create rules that prevent you from roleplaying without outright saying "no roleplaying", just ask any child who likes to 'make believe'.
If you can't RP in 4e, you're not a real Roleplayer.
"Invokers are probably better round after round but Wizard dailies are devastating. Actually, devastating is too light a word. Wizard daily powers are soul crushing, encounter ending, havoc causing pieces of awesome." -AirPower25 Sear the Flesh, Purify the Soul; Harden the Heart, and Improve the Mind; Born of Blood, but Forged by Fire; The MECH warrior reaches perfection.
