Tabletop Community Watch

[Shaka Brah]

That bit there makes me realize I probably wouldn't have liked 4e all that much then. I'm not a big fan of minis gaming; something with that combat style and pacing goes out of fun and into tedious for me.

Well that and my big experiences with it were with WAAC players. I've genuinely tried to play things like Battletech and even Fantasy, but alas it holds no appeal.

Yeah maybe not? It's hard to say really. You can think of it more like a video game if you like. If you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem, it was a bit like that but each person played their own character. A lot of the really great fun came from strategizing with your friends on how to make a team build that could react to any situation, then enacting it tactically on the grid.

 

[Kabuki Actor]

So look for Tourettes-esque bursts that's what you're saying?

Now I remember how he uses them. Bumpfag is not very articulate, his vocabulary is on the same level as the terrible shows he watches (he's an unironic High Guardian Spice fan), at some point he decided to start using the 'lingo' at every opportunity. So he started replacing words like "things" or "stuff" with "shit", . Likewise he doesn't say "cool" anymore, it's just "based" all the time, anything that excites his infant brain is "based". Not pandering to his fetish is "cringe".

Bumpfag otherwise doesn't swear unless you Notice Things.

Please stop posting this. You’re seeing things that aren’t there and it’s fucking pissing me off. Can’t we just enjoy this cool setting without having to see this cringe pdf shit?

Spoiler: Bumpfag on operating systems

 

[robobobo]

4E not letting you roleplay was always the most retarded of the complaints about the system. It has no fewer roleplaying mechanics than any other edition of D&D, because no edition of D&D has any particular mechanics based around roleplay, they're almost entirely combat mechanics. Not liking 4E's combat system, sure, that's a valid opinion to hold, it is very different from other editions, but it did basically nothing at all to roleplaying.

 

[ZMOT]

4E not letting you roleplay was always the most retarded of the complaints about the system. It has no fewer roleplaying mechanics than any other edition of D&D, because no edition of D&D has any particular mechanics based around roleplay, they're almost entirely combat mechanics. Not liking 4E's combat system, sure, that's a valid opinion to hold, it is very different from other editions, but it did basically nothing at all to roleplaying.

hating on 4e always felt like a tryhard thing retards did to gain "nerd cred" because they thought it was the cool thing to do, which only proved their newfag status given how grogs shat all over 3e when it came out (and that was long before the whole OSR thing).

 

[Tactical Wizard]

4e was absolutely a shit-show and a terrible RPG. If you played it and it was going quickly and smoothly, it was because you were ignoring large sections of the rules and the fact that by the time that you got to the mid=levels, everyone at the table was throwing down modifiers, some of which were conditional, that had to be taken into account and recalculated every turn of every round. Don't forget that this is the game that gave us the six page character sheet.

I ignored D&D for an entire edition not because something something WoW or that it had no roleplay support (it did), but for the simple fact that the system doubled down on the worst aspect of third edition (mechanical complexity) and then resold me things that were in the 3/3.5 PHB1 (Barbarians, Druids etc.) in a second book. I've walked away from all of fifth edition World of Darkness for the same reason.

 

[Ghostse]

SA around the time 4E came out was one of the few places that didn't seem to have hostility towards 4E. A lot of content in the old grognards.txt came from particularly hot takes on 4E from scattered forums across the net. Those takes generally boiled down to nerds (wizards) who never emotionally left high school angry that the jocks (fighters) got more exciting things to do in 4E. That thread gradually turned into a wrongthink hunting party, coincidentally around the time Ettin got modded.

You could talk 4e and people generally agreed about it targeting the WoW crowd, but then went on to actually discus the system/modules instead of rehashing that endlessly. Again, there are a lot of legit reasons to not like 4e, its got some really gnarly warts. But a lot people just hate 4e to hate on it.

I am still shocked they never made a 4E CRPG. That's basically a perfect medium for that system. I'd still take a Baldur's Gate style game with the 4E ruleset.

Same. 4e was practically made for it.

Pretty sure I mentioned it before, but I would love to see 4E brought back but rebranded as "D&D Tactics" instead. I loved it as a game but it's impossible to get people to look past the "durr hurr you can't roleplay in it". At least everybody had a choice of shit to do every turn.

Anyone who says you can't RP in 4e is a moron, or a power-gamer having a tantrum about their favorite system abuse being gone. TBF the RP aspect WAS dialed down for most modules (except for an encounter or two). But the better-written modules give advice for when the PCs want to talk instead of murder.
It a very real sense what OSR modules try to do with Skills (no rolls, the player's idea works or it doesn't) 4e was doing with RP; there's no roll you make to see if the King likes you - you need to actually behave like a supplicant

Also a lot of the mobs introduced before MM3 were health sponges, which made the entire game unfun to play. I can imagine that soured people's attitudes towards it.

4e's HP tanks were trying to prevent lucky-one shots. It rewards thinking about probability while also discouraging just trying to make a glass cannon - you need a character who can do a marathon not a sprint. The downside is that combat takes forever, and is really heavily designed for gritty, crunchy combat that is hard to abstract away. Which is fine when its a big, important battle. Less when its a mop-up against some mooks.

Its what they were trying to do with Skill Challenges - just because you rolled one 20 on diplomacy with the King, that doesn't mean you're done/just getting one bad roll doesn't mean you've failed.

DTRPG was absolutely a thing during the 4e era. I was buying OoP books off of it as far back as 2010.

I meant their deal with Wizards for the D&D back-catalogue.

resold me things that were in the 3/3.5 PHB1 (Barbarians, Druids etc.) in a second book.

Its true the cash-grab aspects of 4e were really, really bad. And its not like the 5e add-ons where they are optional play helpers. You had lots of content locked in books without a really good way to get it out.
I was able to get a large percentage of 4e's Non-splat run very cheaply thanks to Borders going under, and if not for that I probably wouldn't keep running the system.

4e was better and worse at complexity than 3.x/PF. The individual components of 4e's mechanism are very simple, but as you chain them up it starts getting very complex trying to keep everything straight.

 

[ZMOT]

4e was absolutely a shit-show and a terrible RPG.

the only difference between your quote and those screenshots are 22 years and the internet/TTRPGs not being mainstream.

to add to that, I personally know people who played the fuck out of 4e for years because it cleaned up a lot of shit of 3.x, so who's to say what makes an RPG good or bad?
truth is there is good and bad shit in everything, not matter the edition or system, and people like different things, that's just how it is. but the absolute spergfit people had about 4e was completely overblown especially since there was whole company catering directly to them for another 10 years. if they wanted they could just keep playing and no one would give a shit (sure, you always can, but there's still a difference between "supported" and "dead"). meanwhile 4e is literally dead and most of it scrubbed from the net unless you know where to look, if there's one fanbase allowed to throw shit it's certainly not the 3e crowd going "MUH MMO EDITION".

 

[Ghostse]

to add to that, I personally know people who played the fuck out of 4e for years because it cleaned up a lot of shit of 3.x, so who's to say what makes an RPG good or bad?

4e modules are the best mechanically written modules I've ever run. Encounters are two page spreads with just about everything you need to run them on the page, and you can practically take turns having people being GM because of how well encapsulated they are. They are also pretty fun, and they let me focus on actually weaving events into the greater story instead of trying to make sure my players don't murderhobo their way into a deadend.

Writing quality varies naturally, but there are some really fun adventures.
The worst thing they do is a lot of "Here there be fun things...but lolidk you figure it out. Lates!"

 

[Tism the Return]

>go to the LGS I hadn't checked before
>hang out with buds, good times all around
>that guy arrives
>easily identifiable by his massive gunt
>brings Magnus to a 1000 points casual game (when everyone agreed not to bring psykers to overwhelm newbies)
>makes up rules ("m-my Magnus can fall back and charge over terrain and hang over your miniatures!")
>makes up your rules too if you didn't know them
>"dude, let me teach you the game. Only I can teach you"
>after 40kek he starts talking DnD
>tells us all about his DMing adventures
>nigga unironically uses his DMPC wizard level 16 to "help" his level 1 players
>his DMPC is his character from another game
>his wizard OC apparently chokeslammed Strahd like a bitch at some point

I left the store after that so I didn't get to hear the rest of the story. Don't think the guy is a lolcow considering fuckers like him are dime a dozen but it's always a surreal experience to watch spergs in their natural habit.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

You could talk 4e and people generally agreed about it targeting the WoW crowd,

Hilariously as someone who plays 4E and WoW...they are nothing alike. It is one of the strangest comparisons I have ever seen in my life. The closest thing I have ever seen between WoW and DND was the 5th Edition Rogue I had when we tried it..which had the same gameplay loop as Vanilla and BC Warlocks.

"I cast Shadowbolt" "I use Melee Basic Attack."

Its true the cash-grab aspects of 4e were really, really bad. And its not like the 5e add-ons where they are optional play helpers. You had lots of content locked in books without a really good way to get it out.

Insider eased that a bit (even if it neve really became what it was promised) where you paid 15 Dollars a month and got a character builder with everything. Unfortunately it ran on Silverlight

 

[Ghostse]

Hilariously as someone who plays 4E and WoW...they are nothing alike. It is one of the strangest comparisons I have ever seen in my life. The closest thing I have ever seen between WoW and DND was the 5th Edition Rogue I had when we tried it..which had the same gameplay loop as Vanilla and BC Warlocks.

"I cast Shadowbolt" "I use Melee Basic Attack."

Basically 4e was speaking to the videogame crowd, not (exactly) WoW itself, its just a shorthand. There is overlap in class role assignment, a mechanical focus on combat, combat that very heavily expects and is balanced towards tactical positioning, which a lot of action MMOs used. In adventure preparation, GMs were encouraged to use a lot of videogame mechanics. Which, I mean - they become common in videogames because they work. 4e travel was also very much designed around "raids" - not much care is given to HOW you arrive to kill the Orcs, just that you do. (This is both a strength and a weakness.) which I think is more what people think about when talking about 4e = WoW.

Again, most of it people angry about 4e are more angry they have to actually fight or that characters that aren't wizards get to do ridiculous stuff too. I had a PathFinder player melt down on me because "Grab was useless" (yes it is, so do anything else.) His usual pathfinder character was a grapple monk or fighter who would beeline to the enemy caster and wrestle them so they couldn't cast.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

4E could've worked fairly well as a straight up tactical game, a la Necromunda or Kill Team. To this day I'm mystified why it wasn't marketed as such.

Zak's complaints are kind of funny, but they are quite accurate. Nobody is used to people who act like fucking supervillains, bragging about their insane antics.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Basically 4e was speaking to the videogame crowd, not (exactly) WoW itself, its just a shorthand. There is overlap in class role assignment, a mechanical focus on combat, combat that very heavily expects and is balanced towards tactical positioning, which a lot of action MMOs used. In adventure preparation, GMs were encouraged to use a lot of videogame mechanics. Which, I mean - they become common in videogames because they work. 4e travel was also very much designed around "raids" - not much care is given to HOW you arrive to kill the Orcs, just that you do. (This is both a strength and a weakness.) which I think is more what people think about when talking about 4e = WoW.

Wouldn't that be...on the DM? Like our Early Campaign (before we gut our Airship, because the DM wanted us to have a cool airship for when the Demon Invasion came and we could do Airship to Airship Combat) had lots of encounters as we traveled. He had a big Template of encounters in the various areas that he would do old school encounter rolls on, and isn't Class Role Assignment and combat a big deal in older editions as well?

Outside of Munchinky shit

that characters that aren't wizards get to do ridiculous stuff too.

That is the big reason why my group likes 4E, Martial Classes get actual thematic abilities, My Charisma Based Paladin's Main attack is Fundamentally Different from the Strength or Wisdom Based Paladin's attack, and that makes him play in a far different than a friends paladin in another campaign.

 

[Shaka Brah]

Basically 4e was speaking to the videogame crowd, not (exactly) WoW itself, its just a shorthand. There is overlap in class role assignment, a mechanical focus on combat, combat that very heavily expects and is balanced towards tactical positioning, which a lot of action MMOs used. In adventure preparation, GMs were encouraged to use a lot of videogame mechanics. Which, I mean - they become common in videogames because they work. 4e travel was also very much designed around "raids" - not much care is given to HOW you arrive to kill the Orcs, just that you do. (This is both a strength and a weakness.) which I think is more what people think about when talking about 4e = WoW.

Again, most of it people angry about 4e are more angry they have to actually fight or that characters that aren't wizards get to do ridiculous stuff too. I had a PathFinder player melt down on me because "Grab was useless" (yes it is, so do anything else.) His usual pathfinder character was a grapple monk or fighter who would beeline to the enemy caster and wrestle them so they couldn't cast.

I still think it was marketed more at wargame and tactics nerds than WoW. I got into it because people kept telling me "Hey, you love Warhams, why not play this game?" My LGS at the time was pretty aggressively putting them next to the games workshop stuff and the push to sell "iconics" miniatures and those random box minis really felt like they were attempting to mimic the success of the Battletech HeroClix game.

 

[ZMOT]

>easily identifiable by his massive gunt

I still think it was marketed more at wargame and tactics nerds than WoW. I got into it because people kept telling me "Hey, you love Warhams, why not play this game?" My LGS at the time was pretty aggressively putting them next to the games workshop stuff and the push to sell "iconics" miniatures and those random box minis really felt like they were attempting to mimic the success of the Battletech HeroClix game.

not necessarily wrong, remember heroscape? that still had (has?) a dedicated fan base years later - imagine getting those and the rpg nerds at the same time to buy your stuff.

4E could've worked fairly well as a straight up tactical game, a la Necromunda or Kill Team. To this day I'm mystified why it wasn't marketed as such.

because this already existed. why they never merged it? no idea. but this is wotc we're talking about, so it shouldn't be surprising. fun fact: 2008 they also took over heroscape, so they had two mini lines they could've used for it.

there's also rumor they completely banked on their virtual tabletop which went down the drain after the sole guy in charge committed a murder-suicide (or something like that, cba to look it up)

@Tactical Wizard
not really mad, just pointing out that the people complaining about 4e had the least amount of reason to do so. there's nothing wrong with not liking it, same as liking it. different strokes for different folks and all.

 

[Adamska]

Minis and TTRPG don't perfectly overlap as an interest; in my gaming group I can mainly say only half have interest in it at all tbh. It's not necessarily how its amount of fighting turns people off; it's how you fight in the game that does it. Now that I'm noticeably more aware of how 4e functions, I get more and more glad I never did find a group to play it and instead started with 3.5 as my first real TTRPG.

Though maybe if that happened, I'd not be as burned on minis then, since that would've been a better intro to the game than what I actually had: ie WAAC players who made it their goal to chump me as absolutely as possible despite never playing until that day.

 

[robobobo]

All right, look, 4E was not an MMO. It has nothing in common with MMOs. It was a turn-based strategy game. The whole, "b-but WoW!" cry from back then was simply retardation, if you're gonna draw a video game comparison I think it'd be more apt to go with Final Fantasy Tactics. And I get that some people dislike that style of combat, I happen to really like TBS games so I was cool with it, but I know it isn't for everyone. In my experience though, the people with the biggest beef appeared to be the caster supremacists who were torqued that they couldn't cast thirty maximized fireballs a day anymore. And don't get me wrong, I do love my caster supremacy, but I thought it was pretty cool that other classes got their own cool powers to throw around too.

 

[Adamska]

Honestly out of my current group only one and a half of them had any interest or sympathy for 4e, and the ones who disliked it played all sorts of classes. Biggest issue was it changed a lot of details, and it also made fights grind on too long due to fortifying the enemy and due to all the fiddly bits.

Fun fact: the guy who didn't want to play DnD for years after touching it favors demicasters, so it isn't some arrogance or hate due to casting getting rebalanced. Especially since he usually focused on the support parts that were not in touch with said magic.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Personally, all I want is a system with the amount of cool maneuvering shit there was on 4e. Playing a Rogue or a Fighter has never been more fun for me, being able to move/block/direct enemies around. Throwing enemies down pits THIS IS SPARTAAAA!-style never got old.

Of course, that sort of shit is reliant on playing on a grid... I wonder if there would be a way to make it work on theater of the mind.

 

[ZMOT]

Though maybe if that happened, I'd not be as burned on minis then, since that would've been a better intro to the game than what I actually had: ie WAAC players who made it their goal to chump me as absolutely as possible despite never playing until that day.

you still get WAACfags in rpgs, powergamer munchkins are basically that.

what people also often overlook is that crunch also reigns those very same people in, like everything it has pros and cons. shit you could get away with in 3.x doesn't fly as easily in 4e (so they hate it), because RAW tells them exactly what is and isn't allowed, there's no ambiguity or interpretation. but that also overlaps with taking freedom from the GM (again, good and bad, see prep time and rule discussions) to set up those limits, which means if you prefer to houserule your stuff heavily, decide shit on the fly and you want your GM do that you'll not gonna like it, adding more voices that hatemob.

as I like to say in the other thread, inevitably it all depends on your table anyway, there isn't really a good or bad, it's all relative. if a GM wants to fuck you over he can do that in any system asf. there are people who successfully made FATAL work for a few sessions, anything's possible.

Personally, all I want is a system with the amount of cool maneuvering shit there was on 4e. Playing a Rogue or a Fighter has never been more fun for me, being able to move/block/direct enemies around. Throwing enemies down pits THIS IS SPARTAAAA!-style never got old.

Of course, that sort of shit is reliant on playing on a grid... I wonder if there would be a way to make it work on theater of the mind.

"the power of your counter shoves the enemy back 2 feet". a grid is just a mechanical abstraction of what you see in your head.

one of the lancer guys is working on a fantasy rpg, haven't really looked into it but heard a lot of good things about lancer:

ICON playtest by Massif Press

Mythic fantasy in a vast green world

massif-press.itch.io