The Gaming Den

There were a several parts of 4E that did not work out of the box. The game isn't perfect by any means, nor did I ever claim it was. There are plenty of legitimate bad things you can say about 4E. Bitching about skill challenges as if it was the worst thing in the world shouldn't be one of them. It ...

Supposedly, according to my much older friend who has strange unknown connections in gaming, and literally makes his living with a booth at cons and so often gets a chance to talk to those chuckleheads, Hasbro was the ringleader of 4e, telling wizards "We need a new edition. Make something lik...

I know you're trying to rescue the utter fail of 4E with some 'I meant to do that ha ha' mealy-mouthed bullshit, but seriously, if true that's the kind of shit that would make me completely swear off a product line. Fortunately it's not true, because WotC went into headless chicken mode trying to f...

In my experience, attempting to get players to "solve" a social challenge results in blank stares from normally intelligent and proactive players. The players do not share your thought patterns and cannot read your mind. Even if it works, you're still playing the metagame and rendering th...

I do not understand your reasoning. If you "can" replace semi functional rules with rules that absolutely don't work how is that a positive? Moreover, if your suggestion is "don't use mentioned rules" then wouldn't that be you admitting that the rules, as they are, are a negativ...

So is it a better idea to instead do competitive play by sucking more G.M cock than the other players? Because you know, that's what MTP boils down to. I think you guys just need to find better DMs, because I have never actually had that problem. In general, the DM has something in mind for what yo...

That is an awesomely selective memory you got there. You remember when 4e dropped and people were like "WTF is this shit!? There are no rules for like anything !" and the canned 4rrie response was "Use a Skill Challenge!"? People are supposed to start riding Griffins around leve...

That hurt my brain. Anyone who can look at the skill challenge and wealth system train wrecks and tell me with a straight face that the game is perfect and has no major problems is a failure as a human being. Skill challenges are supposed to be half the game . On release, they were uncompleteable. ...

Sword, NPCs should react based on how the rules tell them to react. If you tell a guard to let you through because diplomacy "I'm on important business <high roll>" then you're going to get through because the guard really does think your business is important. If the guard stops me I'm g...

Every single rule limits the MC because in MTP the MC is infallible. Yes, that's true. But I'm not sure why that matters. I already stated that rules that exist for other purposes are fine. It's only when you start writing rules for the specific purpose of limiting the DM that you create problems. ...

I haven't met anyone in the last two years who even knows what 4e RAW is. The convoluted relationship of 4e rules to Essentials rules and Insider rules to Book rules to Errata documents is so lengthy and perplexing that every single person I know has either given up on trying to follow it or given ...

ishy wrote: But then again, nobody plays 3.5 raw anyway.

That's the real issue with why 4E fans think 4E is better. There are plenty of groups that play 4E RAW, while almost all 3E games tend to have some house rules.

Sword, you are completely missing PL's point. Having a bunch of rules helps put everyone on the same page and prevents many disagreements about what can and should happen when X player uses Y maneuver. One of the reasons rules are made is to keep things fair, be it between players, or GMs and the p...

Arguably you could call a strategy player more of a knot-cutter, but even still I don't feel like people who enjoy strategy want to walk in with an advantage, because the whole point of masterful strategy is creating the advantage through your strategy, not because you innately had the edge going i...

Swordslinger: you've confused strategy with tactics; a strategist makes the most out of supply, outfitting, and organization, so in a TTRPG they would be the dudes rolling in with a huge advantage. Arguably you could call a strategy player more of a knot-cutter, but even still I don't feel like peo...

A perfectly balanced system would be boring to mess around with, because there simply wouldn't be any sort of Cost-Benefit Analysis involved in character creation or strategy selection. When everything is equal, then you just describe your character and go. While that's ideal from certain perspecti...

Ergo your argument is that you should never write rules that restrict GMs in any way because you treat Bad GMs as not existing. There are plenty of reasons you might write rules that prevent GMs from doing certain stuff, but the purpose of those rules isn't solely to restrict the GM. Tactical comba...

I'm not the one who's entire argument relies on destructive GMS who you yourself dismiss as not existing. You apparently don't understand my argument. The point isn't that bad GMs don't exist. It's that there's no cure for it other than finding a new GM. You don't rewrite the rules of soccer becaus...

But I think you fail to realize. That you are actually arguing distinctly in favor of my position. Because you are basically telling us "The GM can ignore the rules and destroy the game using the Fairy Tea Party!". I agree that there are bad DMs out there, what I don't agree with is that ...

BZZZT!!! And right here you are in WTF territory. Rules exist EXACTLY for this purpose. Among others, but DEFINITELY this is in the top 10, the top five, the top three it might even be THE top reason on the list of reasons for having rules. If you INDEED believe your claim that rules are NOT for EX...

Some players do enjoy being able to rules loophole their way into being better than their other party members. I'm not quite sure if that's a huge selling point of an edition though.

Most people describe the bad and unbalanced rules of Rifts as a drawback, not a plus.

Explain to me what formal rules are and why we don't just use Fairy Tea party for EVERYTHING. Rules are generally so people can take actions and have some idea of what the outcomes will be and to speed up play. Also, rules can make the game more fun in areas like combat. Rules do not exist to creat...

But why would an experienced gamer put up with such an MC in the first place? And do you really think that desperately clinging to a ruleset the size of the Library of Congress could save your game from a hostile or incompetent MC? Finally, I don't see why you're taking such an aggressive, doctrina...

I liked the 4E way better, it was easier to run in play and made multiple damage types a benefit instead of a hindrance like they were in 3E.

If that's the case, then you should be complaining that the 4E format is a gigantic waste of space. Without fluff or the requirement to state the power's effect in plain English, you could compress 90%+ of all powers into a single line, I bet (again, along the lines of the appendix in the 1E DMG). ...