Role-Playing Games: An Explanation.

The Game Room
21

Hmm, no, I didn’t say that. A cyberpunk game isn’t the same as a high fantasy game, for instance, whether I like it or not. A skill based game isn’t the same as a level-based game, whether I like it or not. But the various editions of D&D, as the name implies, are all variations of the same game. If you don’t like one much, you’re not going to like the others much better, because they aren’t really different. That was my point.

The fact that I can understand what people are talking about when discussing here the differences between the 3rd and 4th editions, re balance and so on, or other recent discussion about it or references to it, despite having only ever played the 1st edition, quite demonstrates that it’s essentially the same game. I couldn’t if they were talking about an actually different game I was unfamiliar with.

That’s not the game where the peculiarities of the previous incarnations of your avatar allow you to draw a second interaction card and change the narrative of the game master while you’re enquiring about Jack the ripper. That’s not the game when you penetrate the brain of mentally ill patients and try to figure out the symbolic sense of their hallucinations. That’s not the game where you’re laughing to tears because you’ve lost your 5th clone of the night to a nuclear grenade provided without documentation by The Computer (who is your friend). That used to be the game where you roll a D20 to know if your 5th level lawful evil warrior hit the orc. That’s now the game where you roll a D20 to know if your 5th level lawful evil warrior hit the orc.

Compare for instance the differences between Runequest() 2nd edition (skill based where you fight critters) and its next iteration Heroquest (narration and keywords based where you face challenges) and you indeed have a significantly new game that it’s not interchangeable and won’t appeal to the same public despite keeping the same setting. The various iterations of D&D? Not really, no.
() I guess you can’t in fact compare, because those are games from an older generation, and not that proeminent to boot, but you’ll get my drift.

22

It may be true that, after the massive flood of books and supplements put out by WotC after its initial release, 4e classes and roles got a bit muddled. My group never used anything past the initial set of “core” books (PhB I and II and the first few “power” books). I don’t know. I can only speak to what I actually played, and what I played was good.

4e started from a pretty simple premise: “Hey! Let’s make all the classes good!”

That’s it. That was the whole damned thing. Every single class started with the same level of access to the game and every class had roughly the same ability to affect what was happening in combat. After 4e came out, you never heard anybody say that they hated it because they hated what fighters had become in the new edition. They hated it because wizards and druids had been brought into line with everyone else.

The role definitions (defender, controller, striker, leader) were positively brilliant and were well-executed. Each role filled a clear niche on the board and you always had a decent idea of what your “job” was in combat based on that role. Was that a nod to MMOs? Sure! But that’s not a negative. Before 4e, being a “tank” meant maybe you had a few more hitpoints or a slightly better armor class. In 4e, you could actually be a tank. It was great.

If 4e had a legitimate fault, it was in the unfortunate decision on WotC’s part to flood the market with too many options. Since things like powers and feats weren’t tied to class archetypes but rather to the baseline classes, races, or stats, you eventually ended up with *hundreds *of options to choose from for each character, and that was way too much. 5e is definitely going a better direction, with the bulk your class options being tied up in the “package” you choose at level 2 or 3. I imagine future supplements will focus on those packages rather than on making the baseline classes more broad.

On the other hand, that led to an interesting dynamic in my group. We ended up using 4e for a lot of games that were not traditional fantasy. It was really easy to reskin the classes for other settings. I played a Mad Max style barbarian in junkyard armor and a tire iron. I played a wizard sheriff with gadgets and a variable-ammunition long rifle in a Bravestar-style setting. It was awesome, and only feasible because every single class had a huge swath of abilities to choose from, and those abilities all conformed to certain broad role archetypes.

23

The OP seems more like a blog post than an invitation to s discussion.

24

If you didn’t realize that throwing around a term like “baseless” is picking a fight, now you’ve been told.

Actually, I found 4e impressively well designed. Some people have mentioned to me ways of breaking the system with higher-powered characters, and others have suggested that at higher levels they’ve found it impossible to challenge players. But my experience has been that of a very well balanced system. Accounting for exactly why for many of us it didn’t feel like a roleplaying game so much as an elaborate board game is another matter, and I think the main objection that I hear from other gamers.

I ran the game for over a year in weekly sessions, and I’ve discussed it often with other gamers. It was fun, it required very little prep work for the GM, but I longed to get back to playing an RPG.

Well, there’s this:

PHB 4e 80 - Come and Get It - Each target within 3 squares must shift 2 and end up adjacent to you, then you get to attack.

There’s no action principle at work here. It’s a magical effect.

Your point is well taken. Looking over the list, most of the fighter abilities in the PHB are plausibly caused by physical actions. I could say more circumspectly, “Even the fighter can get abilities that are magic-like in their effects.” Otherwise, I take back the overly broad claim that every class feels like a kind of wizard.

I myself actually find that it’s almost a cliche among gamers to preface complaints about 4e with the disclaimer that it was a very well designed game.

25

Maybe, but it’s a standard “tank” effect. It fits precisely in the role to which the fighter was assigned. It doesn’t make the fighter a wizard - it makes him a tank.

26

Looks like I cut out for space my proposition that the ‘tank’ role has developed to require magic-like abilities. Generally, these are mind-affecting. That a fighter, generally low-Chriz and low-Wiz can keep persuading enemies attack him instead of the guy dropping fireballs makes no sense. It’s a magic-like ability. I didn’t mention it above because at least part of this was fixed in 4e, given that the ‘marking’ mechanic actually makes a kind of physical sense – you’ve got a fighter looking for opportunities to slip in another attack, so you find yourself rationally motivated not to create an opening by moving or pointing your weapon elsewhere.

That we need the fighter to somehow manage to draw attacks away from others is what the tank role is about, but if the mechanisms by which he does so are abstract with no clear action principle, we might as well call it magic. Having just looked at the fighter’s abilities in 4e I’d say they did manage to find a number of ways in which the tanking function could be the result of the use of physical action – interposing ones self to allow a friend to escape a threatened area, taking an attack that was intended for another, reaching across to block an attack against someone else, ect. But what is the rational motive behind several people deciding to run into range of a sweeping attack? It has the effect of a mind-affecting spell. The fact that this is the kind of thing we’d really like a tank to be able to do doesn’t make it any less magical.

27

I’m all sorts of bitter than I missed out on a 1st edition campaign at my local games store (filled up before I was aware of it). I never really got into the subsequent editions but I’d like to go back to the classic.

Not to be misunderstood, the more recent editions might be great and for all I know much more playable than 1st edition. I just got busy and ran out of opportunities to play them by the time they came around. It’d be nice to be able to dust off the old books though rather than learn a new system and buy new material. I don’t have the time or commitment to run a campaign myself though.

Anyway, I’ve played a bunch of other games in my time but AD&D still holds a premiere place in my gaming heart.

28

You say it’s magical. I say it’s the player being given agency to declare that a bunch of mooks are being idiots and running towards him, just like in every action movie ever.

29

I completely disagree that “come and get it” feels “magical” at all. It does, however, suffer from the same problem that a number of martial effects have - that it makes a lot less sense when applied to unintelligent monsters.

A fighter wading into the middle of a crowd of thugs, banging on his shield, and saying “Come and get it, b*tches!” to make them rush over to him to try to beat the crap out of him makes perfect sense to me.

It makes a lot less sense with dire wolves. Or skeletons. But again, this is more in the line of “maps poorly to fiction” than “This feels like a magical effect.”

Certainly, it doesn’t make the fighter ‘feel like a wizard’.

But at the end of the day, you’ve basically proved my original point: One of the complaints people have always had about 3X is the fighter/wizard problem, where the fighter sucks and has no choices and the wizard does everything and has a billion choices. So WotC listened, and said “Okay! Good news guys! We fixed it! Everyone gains power at the same rate and has cool decisions to make in combat!” And then people say what you say “But…now everyone feels like a wizard!” to which I can only say “Yes, that’s what you asked for.” You can’t solve the fighter/wizard problem without…solving the fighter/wizard problem. Either people gain powers at essentially the same rate, or they don’t and someone gets more powerful faster than someone else.

4E has some legitimate issues - the main one that I can think of is that a number of things, such as the encounter/daily power structure, and the ability to do anything to anything unless it explicitly says you can’t (see “knock the ooze prone”) map poorly to the fiction and this causes dissonance in some people’s headspace. But 3E and Pathfinder also have issues (including, IMHO, a far worse case of “can’t possibly challenge the players at higher levels”) I would even argue that their issues are more severe - though that is certainly a matter of opinion. None of these systems ‘suck’, regardless of what you read people saying on the internet. If someone tells you they do, they are objectively wrong.

Jophiel - honestly, you probably didn’t miss crap by not playing in a “1E” campaign. “Original AD&D” (which is probably what you mean, but who knows, there were a LOT of ‘editions’ of D&D before 2e) was a horrifying mishmash of piecemeal rules with no internal consistency, balance, or connection to reality. (My chance to open a stuck door is rolled with a d6, but if I want to ‘lift a gate’ that’s percentile!) It also suffered from an awesome case of not actually telling you what to do with the rules or how to play. (The boxed sets sometimes referred to as “BECM(I)” did rather better in this regard). While it’s certainly possible it could have been a good game, that would have had very little if anything to do with the rules. There’s really nothing ‘classic’ about it. If you have the itch to play something ‘old school’ there are a number of new systems that do a way better job of evoking what AD&D was trying to evoke without making a total train wreck of it.

30

If your last contact with the game was 1st edition and you never even actually played it, can you really remember those rules more easily than you can learn a considerably simpler and more coherent ruleset? Seems unlikely. But you could see if you can find a group for your particular niche, perhaps on MeetUp. While working on 5e, WotC published reprints of the old rulebooks and who knows but that there might be a bunch of people looking for such a group. You might want to look for the keyword OSR (Old School Revival/Revolution).

Otherwise, you might consider that you can get your Basic rules for the current edition free, which will work just fine so long as you just want to play the four base classes.

31

I phrased it wrong or was misunderstood. I played a lot of 1st edition. Second edition came out towards the end of my gaming time but most people just stayed with 1st or combined rules from the two. By the time subsequent editions came out, I was out of the scene. So I’m fully comfortable with the original rules.

I’m posting from my phone so keeping it short but thought I’d respond to cut off the posts assuming I’d never played.

32

This may sound mean, but no, you’re probably not. Not only has it been 25 years since you played, but you probably didn’t understand/use half of the rules anyway, because 1e was such a mess that it basically required every group to make up their own houserules and drop half the rules as written.

Quick! What does a thief roll to open locks? What does an elf roll to notice secret doors? I mean, FFS, in 1st edition you had to check a table to see if you HIT something.

I’m with Johnny Angel 100% on this one - even if you don’t want to pick up the “relatively complicated” 5e rules that he linked, you’re STILL better off going with some sort of ‘retroclone’ like Dark Dungeons (which is free) and moves everything to a unified framework and which will probably feel more like the 1E you “remember” than going back to look at the actual 1e rules will.

33

They look in the book? :wink:

“Comfortable” didn’t mean “100% memorized”. [Edit: From old memory, thieves roll percentile, elves find a secret door casually 1-in-6 or 2-in-6 if actively searching. No promises on that being right though]

Anyway, I’m certainly not looking to debate whether or not I know the Turn Undead charts off the top of my head. Just saying that my previous post obviously gave the impression that I never played. In reality I played for years (old art handbooks, Fiend Folio, Unearthed Arcana, — Survival Guides, never got into Oriental Adventures though). Agreed about house rules and all: No one I ever played with used weapon speeds or the Vs. Armor Type charts for instance. But it’s all no big deal in any event; mainly just came to mind because I got my MeetUp email from the game shop with the filled 1st Ed Greyhawk campaign listed in it.

34

Sure. :slight_smile: But the glory of some of the new games is that you don’t have to.

I think thieves didn’t graduate to percentiles until 2e, and they had collections of random screwy dice before that, but that could be my memory going bad.

Fair enough. And what I think Johnny and I are asserting is - DON’T feel like “Oh man, the only rule set I know is 1E and I can’t be arsed to learn something new” because modern games require way less annoying fiddly stuff than 1E did, so you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised if you just say “screw it” and join a 5E game.

35

Just a quick note: the timeline is really off in several places.

36

It seems very similar to the prowesses of some (warrior) heroes of Irish lore.

37

I’m at home now so I just dusted off (literally) my old Players Handbook and checked. I was right on both counts, thieves with the percentile and elves with the d6. Score nerd points for me :slight_smile:

38

Let’s try : percentile dice to open locks. D6 to notice secret doors. Did I get it right?

Using a table isn’t a bad thing. I’ve played plenty of games I loved that used tables for everything.

That said, AD&D first edition was indeed a mess, and people did ignore a lot of rules (for instance , I don’t remember anybody using the bonus/malus every single weapon had against every single type of armor). And made up their own rules sometimes. Not a bad thing in my opinion. For instance, I see someone stating “prone” doesn’t make any sense for an ooze. Well, then, it doesn’t work for an ooze, period. I always ignored rules that made no sense in context. Most players I’ve known have done the same. As a result, when I saw comment like that in this thread, my first thought was exactly that. Why don’t they just ignore or change the rule that doesn’t make sense? Huh?

Still, a good and coherent set of rules is important to streamline the game. And ADD 1st edition rules were everything but that. I don’t think however there was any concurent game when it was first published. After checking, ADD 1st edition was published in 1977, Traveller in 1977, Chivalry and Sorcery in 1977, Runequest in 1978 (the most well known alternatives in the late 70s, I think). I discover something that surprises me : basic Dungeons and Dragons (the version was preceded ADD) was published until the 90s (1993 for the last rulebook). I had absolutely no clue, I thought it had been completely abandoned after the publication of ADD, and have never known anybody playing it (I used to own the basic set, though). So, I guess that for nostalgy, one should try this one rather than ADD 1st edition.

ADD 1st edition was a bad, poorly thought out game, but well, it was the first, and discovering the concept was just magical. The issue I have with dungeons and dragons in general is that despite creating more sensible rules, they kept some of the central bad elements, and in particular the arbitrary divisions in “classes”, “levels”, “alignements”, that in my opinion adversely affect both realism and role-playing and were quickly abandoned by most later game creators.

39

I see that I was right too (I responded before reading later posts). So, 25 years later, we do still remember the basic rules. And even though there was some esoteric ones I probably wouldn’t remember, I probably also didn’t use them at the time. So, I guess we could still run a 1st edition campaign without looking up the rules :wink:
Go out of our lawn, punks!

40

Speaking of ill designed, rule heavy games… anyone else ever play Twilight: 2000? I think they eventually made a second edition that was, you know, playable but the first edition had more charts and tables than a CPA’s office. Roll to see how many brass casings you recover from the weeds, roll to see how long your jeep can run on ethanol, roll to how many fish you can kill with a fragmentation grenade, roll to see which dialect of Ukrainian you can speak, roll to see how long before you die from rabies if you’re taking belladonna…