Dwarf - I'm not here to edition war, so ill just say that as a person who tried out 1-3 editions and never got hooked, 4e was what I wanted in a rpg. Ymmv, etc etc, and obviously, everyone who likes any edition should be respected. But, i didn't want to let your comments be unchallenged - it wasn't my groups experience. As for whether simple rules lead to more players, it makes sense, but doesn't have a lot of data, methinks. I believe the general accepted wisdom is that with hobbies, the instan feedback is addictive, and not necessarily the rules or difficulty. I mean, some games thrive on difficulty (golf, agricola). But, it seems like having levels of complexity is the only way to unite the fanbase. Right now, it seems too complex for some and too simple for others.
I have to second this.
@Dwarfslayer- It's also worth noting that 4e is only as complicated as you let it be. All combats can be run as skill challenges, with each failure representing an unconscious or killed party member, and with each success representing an unconscious or killed monster. Also, if you leave complicated terrain out of the mix, the tactical options become largely unimportant. Heck, you can even use your at-wills without applying the tactical part. Nothing says you can't use Tide of Iron without applying the forced movement.
so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin." NPC: "Really?" Fighter: "Yes." NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?" Fighter: "I do." NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?" Fighter: "What?" NPC: "I don't know what it means either." Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do." NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics." Fighter: "These what?" NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
Yes, most people have tried that, but the game play must also be simple. A complex tactical combat type of game just doesn't attract new people to the hobby.
Yeah, I have to second this. Of all the new players our group tried to recruit using 4E, none of them ended up coming for more than 2 sessions. Most of them just complained that the game was too complicated, got overwhelmed and lost interest.
4E was only seemed to interest existing D&D players, and even then, fragmented the player base.
That's contray to my own experience. I've run introductory games at conventions and other venues for years, and 4e was easy for new gamers to get a grip on and get into, more so than prior editions of both D&D and many other games I've used over the years. I'm afraid some of that may be because of the "MMO" elements (though I still maintain MMOs stole from D&D, not the other way 'round!), since a lot more people have played MMOs than have tried TTRPGs. It was the ongoing and returning D&Ders who really balked at 4e, it zigged and zagged here or there, and if you were really a /D&Der/ rather than having done a lot of different RPGs, you had a lot to un-learn. I saw it many times, the kid would 'get' things like using powers immediately, and the dad, confident he 'new' D&D because he'd played it for 10 years in the 80s or 90s, would be mystified by the lack of SM/L damage for his weapon or the longtime D&Der used to 3.5 would try to reverse engineer all the math on the CB sheet and drive himself crazy.
Certainly the public games I participate in have a majority of new players who never played earlier eds. I could never have gathered even a single group like that with 3e.
Of course, 4e isn't the complex tactical game (or simplistic board game) edition warriors liked to pretend it was, anyway. It had some tactical depth, but it was a long way from serious wargames.
The main problem is that when you add tactical combat, there's just so much more people have to think about. It's not just the "I'm the fighter, I kill stuff with a sword", now you must worry about marking things (which is a difficult concept to explain to newbies), and then there's a lot of focus on the battlegrid and tactical actions.
I've never seen a newbie confused by marking. Of course, a lot of the time they go "oh, it's like aggro," so MMO or video games have an introductory aspect of their own, I guess. It's those who have vested a lot in learning old editions that balk at the few novel mechanics, like marks and healing surges, that 4e introduced. They may seem like a hurdle to us, because they're a /change/ but to new players, they're fine. Likewise, if you've graduated to the 'advanced storytelling techniques' like TotM or outright freestyle RP, going back to minis and a grid may seem limiting, but to a new player, minis are very concrete and help them visualize the action making that connection between the rules, the dice, the accounting for hps, and the fantasy adventure they're supposed to represent.
Even the basic swordstrike isn't something you ever want to use, because you have at-will powers that are better. Everything just felt so metagame that it lost the story.
No new player ever goes "wow this seems so metagame!" He's concerned with learning a game, its a new experience. And, when he looks at an option and it says "basic" it's pretty intuitive that it's not going to be his /best/ trick.
I found that the conditions to trigger opportunity attacks have always been the issue for new players. The other lesser issues are improvised actions are always inferior and understanding Immediate actions. That was my experience when I DM'd for new players that came into the local game store to try out 4e.
Imagine a world where the first-time D&D player rolls stats, picks a race, picks a class, picks an alignment, and buys gear to create a character. Imagine if an experienced player, maybe the person helping our theoretical player learn the ropes, could also make a character by rolling ability scores and picking a race, class, feat, skills, class features, spells or powers, and so on. Those two players used different paths to build characters, but the system design allows them to play at the same table. -Mearl
I see very few reasons to go over roleplaying in any detail. Roleplaying has very limited change between editions. It also has a lot to do with the campaign setting. Though some of the things that determine roleplaying, stat-wise, is how different each class plays out. As long as there is a noticeable difference with at least a half-decent customization method, roleplaying is fine. It's easy to create a flavour that suits you. It only becomes a problem when classes play very similar to eachother (like in 4th edition).
Tony - I would agree with almost all of that, honestly. I'm getting to be a longtime rpger, and I can honestly say none of that was a problem for us going into the game or new players that tried out 4th. None of that was what turned us off, so on all that, I'd say you're spot-on. 4th wasn't honestly any harder than any other edition to teach, just different.
Yes, most people have tried that, but the game play must also be simple. A complex tactical combat type of game just doesn't attract new people to the hobby.
Yeah, I have to second this. Of all the new players our group tried to recruit using 4E, none of them ended up coming for more than 2 sessions. Most of them just complained that the game was too complicated, got overwhelmed and lost interest.
4E was only seemed to interest existing D&D players, and even then, fragmented the player base.
That's contray to my own experience. I've run introductory games at conventions and other venues for years, and 4e was easy for new gamers to get a grip on and get into, more so than prior editions of both D&D and many other games I've used over the years. I'm afraid some of that may be because of the "MMO" elements (though I still maintain MMOs stole from D&D, not the other way 'round!), since a lot more people have played MMOs than have tried TTRPGs. It was the ongoing and returning D&Ders who really balked at 4e, it zigged and zagged here or there, and if you were really a /D&Der/ rather than having done a lot of different RPGs, you had a lot to un-learn. I saw it many times, the kid would 'get' things like using powers immediately, and the dad, confident he 'new' D&D because he'd played it for 10 years in the 80s or 90s, would be mystified by the lack of SM/L damage for his weapon or the longtime D&Der used to 3.5 would try to reverse engineer all the math on the CB sheet and drive himself crazy.
Certainly the public games I participate in have a majority of new players who never played earlier eds. I could never have gathered even a single group like that with 3e.
Of course, 4e isn't the complex tactical game (or simplistic board game) edition warriors liked to pretend it was, anyway. It had some tactical depth, but it was a long way from serious wargames.
The main problem is that when you add tactical combat, there's just so much more people have to think about. It's not just the "I'm the fighter, I kill stuff with a sword", now you must worry about marking things (which is a difficult concept to explain to newbies), and then there's a lot of focus on the battlegrid and tactical actions.
I've never seen a newbie confused by marking. Of course, a lot of the time they go "oh, it's like aggro," so MMO or video games have an introductory aspect of their own, I guess. It's those who have vested a lot in learning old editions that balk at the few novel mechanics, like marks and healing surges, that 4e introduced. They may seem like a hurdle to us, because they're a /change/ but to new players, they're fine. Likewise, if you've graduated to the 'advanced storytelling techniques' like TotM or outright freestyle RP, going back to minis and a grid may seem limiting, but to a new player, minis are very concrete and help them visualize the action making that connection between the rules, the dice, the accounting for hps, and the fantasy adventure they're supposed to represent.
Even the basic swordstrike isn't something you ever want to use, because you have at-will powers that are better. Everything just felt so metagame that it lost the story.
No new player ever goes "wow this seems so metagame!" He's concerned with learning a game, its a new experience. And, when he looks at an option and it says "basic" it's pretty intuitive that it's not going to be his /best/ trick.
I didnt have as much experience with it as you generally seem to have but my annecdotes all correspond very closely though I never seen the MMO environment mentioned... we tended to talk about how to visualise your powers and freedom to adjust the default and they get that very nicely
