Grognards.txt

[robotkarateman]

Corey Haim's final moments.

[Dogfish]

Corey Haim's final moments.

Too soon...

This seems like a classic 'mistake' where someone has gone from being a GM and players to a GM vs. the players. Though I guess that has nothing to do with the original post.

[clockworkjoe]

you guys should start looking for more grognards.txt material

i.e. terrible posts about tabletop rpgs

so we can laugh at them and stuff

[Vega Baby]

So, on these other boards I post on, specifically The Spoony Experiment boards, I'm one of the only supporters of 4E among a bunch of 3.5 fans and other various old-schoolers.  Generally, our rare discussions on the topic of 4E are reasonably civil, they honestly have good arguments most of the time, and I'd like to think at least that mine are good as well, and generally everyone goes away agreeing that the system has flaws, and it's mostly a matter of opinion..

However, there's this one fellow there who seems to have an irrational HATRED for 4th edition, so much so that I'm half-convinced the PHB2 killed his father on the side of an old country road one night.  I have picked what is probably his worst post on the topic for your entertainment, wherein he argues that MONOPOLY IS A BETTER RPG THAN 4E.

A lot of the people that say you 'can' roleplay in 4E despite the system don't realise that the people that prefer Pathfinder/3.5/AD&D aren't saying that the game doesn't allow you to.

In fact, "When your room looks kind of weird, and you wish that you weren't there, just close your eyes and make believe, and you can be anywhere"; I can roleplay during any activity. I can be folding socks and roleplay. I can name the socks, give them identities and all that sort of things.

The thing they're saying is that, 3.5/Pathfinder/AD&D were more capable of allowing you, both as Player Characters and Non-Player-Characters have stats and skills and feats and classes that represented a larger variety of character concepts.

I know, we all know that you 'can' say that you're anything you want. I can say that I'm a grizzled old retried war veteran that comes back to adventuring to try one last time to find the lost macguffin that had eluded him in his youth, to train a new batch of adventurers so they don't make the same mistakes he did at their age. Nothing will fucking stop me from saying that. I can say that my character is that and not even have a character sheet. I can say that my left sock I'm folding is that character.

The problem though is that there is a disconnect in 4E D&D between what you say and what you are, on the character sheet. Either you play the characters Wizards of the Coast built for you, or your character and his sheet have nothing in common, and it creates a disconnect, that makes the game feel tacked on for no reason.

4E D&D then feels like a jRPG, where you walk around and can talk to people or do things, but then combat comes out, the screen shakes a few times and you're in an entirely new game where your old retired veteran has a high Str score because that's needed to make an effective Warlord, or either that, or he suddenly decides that, just for battle, he's a Bard, because Bard's powers use Charisma.

3.5/Pathfinder/AD&D though, it's a lot easier to make sure that what's on your character sheet syncs up a shitload better than with what your concept is, without sacrificing total usefulness in the game.

Oh, I'm sure I 'could' create a Warlord with an 8 Str, but the game and balance will have to crawl to a standstill as it scratches its head at my retarded fucking character statistics.

Because every stat is more important, there is often a lot more use for stats that don't go straight into your combat powers in 3.5/Pathfinder/AD&D. You don't just cherry pick 2 stats for combat usefulness and powers, dump on everything else except maybe a third for a Defense, and then roleplay an entirely different character than your sheet suggests you have.

Another problem 4E has is that it tries to shoehorn in fixes edgewise with feats, so to get a few of those concepts you need, you have to sacrifice utlity to try to mash in a feat that allows you to be what you wanted, which would had been a lot easier in a different game.

Non-Player-Characters are much, much worse than Player Characters in this regard. The entire game falls apart entirely if you imagine the world as a dynamic place that moves while the players aren't watching it.

Whole armies of high level and experienced minions die instantly in a sandstorm, the economy is a clusterfuck that's balanced entirely on game mechanics and attempts in no way to try to make sense, environmental penalties and rules make it so entire civilizations in less than pleasant sunny climates will wither away the moment the player characters set eyes on it.

The game falls apart thematically and sensibly unless you assume everything is a static mobile for the players to kill and loot, tucked away in an ethereal void or quantum probability cloud until within Spot/Listen check proximity of the Player Characters in which case they coalese in media res in a state that would fall apart if the Players were inclined to actively watch the state for more than a few weeks.

Not to mention lazy powers, skill checks, items and abilities that only work in metagame terms and make no sense when you even barely attempt to examine them from the point of view of a character in universe.

Ressurection that costs about as much as a small wardrobe of barely nice clothing with no other penalty than an hour of time and a small penalty for a handful of rolls, and yet people still even die in the fucking world from anything other than old age, skill challenges that are frightening impossible for simple checks and ironically easy for shit that should be difficult to do.

The game just outright can not stand up to any amount of in-universe scrutiny, and that's why, if you don't play the characters the game wants you to, you have to just make shit up.

Feats and Magic Items entirely indivorsable from the setting (and its lazy AdjectiveNoun naming system) and the default character builds (and tell me how easy it is to play a striker class that uses the 'wrong' type of armor or a leader with the 'wrong' alignment or 'type' of weapon by the default core books).

Core concepts to the genre that are split between 200 books so that the only way to attempt to customize your guy is to wait for a 'patch' to come out and add something you might want.

And you're right, nothing does 'stop' you from just saying you're whatever the fuck you want to say you are. I can't contest that. But we might as well have Monopoly out, and any time I want to do something, see if I land on Park Place. Sure it won't make any sense to what I want to do in-universe compared to what I want to do in-game, but neither would 4E.

[Boyos]

His problem along with most 4e haters, world of warcraft kidnapped his rpg group and raped his friends and now he is forced to play the basterd spawn called 4e.

[malyss]

I didn't find a lot of his arguments that bad, but I think the level of game he is looking for isn't covered as well by the "standard" 4e format. In general, I don't find 4e is made for the "gritty" settings he seems to prefer. In 4e, you are heroes. Not zeros. If you are playing an aging veteran, he was the kind of guy who was awarded the Victoria Cross, or Medal of Honor. Twice. He wasn't the guy who just made it through on the tails of those around him. I remind my players of that often - that just because I describe a NPC as "bad ass," it doesn't mean he is better than they are - they are special - they are the heroes of the story. They can do stuff normal people can't. 4e isn't about playing the simple farmer who actually has no ability.

You can make the character in a variety of ways and have them be less than ideal, mechanically, but you can "nerf" a character in most systems if you wanted to.

I find his arguments are like a lot of peoples' views on the various games; you can support any argument with a specific enough scenario.

And how the hell does he know which sock is the "left" one?

[Tadanori Oyama]

you guys should start looking for more grognards.txt material

i.e. terrible posts about tabletop rpgs

so we can laugh at them and stuff

I'm not good enough at forum diving to find asshole, apparently. All the discussions I'm finding seem reasonable and mannerly.

[Boyos]

Clearly Tad has never been to the world of warcraft forums. There its hard to open a thread and not find 3 assholes!

[Tadanori Oyama]

Clearly Tad has never been to the world of warcraft forums. There its hard to open a thread and not find 3 assholes!

Well you guys make this look easy. I thought if I just pop opened RPG.net's forums I'd have my pick of the nut jobs but so far so luck.

[AmishNinja]

What the hell? John Wick isn't nearly as bad of a guy as those tidbits make him sound. I mean yeah, he hates on D&D as much as the other grognards, but his recent GM advice book is actually full of good stuff. He had some good ideas to share at the panel he did with Robin Laws at GenCon 2009, too. So I guess I'm defending him here.

That said, when I went to the panel, I wanted Robin to punch him the balls for hating on 4E without even having played it (Robin called him out on his blog for it).

[clockworkjoe]

I didn't find a lot of his arguments that bad, but I think the level of game he is looking for isn't covered as well by the "standard" 4e format. In general, I don't find 4e is made for the "gritty" settings he seems to prefer. In 4e, you are heroes. Not zeros. If you are playing an aging veteran, he was the kind of guy who was awarded the Victoria Cross, or Medal of Honor. Twice. He wasn't the guy who just made it through on the tails of those around him. I remind my players of that often - that just because I describe a NPC as "bad ass," it doesn't mean he is better than they are - they are special - they are the heroes of the story. They can do stuff normal people can't. 4e isn't about playing the simple farmer who actually has no ability.

You can make the character in a variety of ways and have them be less than ideal, mechanically, but you can "nerf" a character in most systems if you wanted to.

I find his arguments are like a lot of peoples' views on the various games; you can support any argument with a specific enough scenario.

And how the hell does he know which sock is the "left" one?

How does 3E get 'I'm a weakling who can barely get out of bed yet I adventure for some reason' any better? I remember people making THE EXACT argument against 3E because ALL character classes raise their Base Attack Bonus as they level up - some guy on rpg.net hated it because he wanted to play a scholar who never made a melee attack in his life.

It's an inane argument for the fact that I never see people talking about how great their gimped PC is. Do you ever see anyone writing about 'oh man I made this fighter with flashbacks, a bad back and ulcers - he is so deep and awesome to roleplay as' or do you always see people "oh I made this badass fighter/samurai/barbarian/prestige class X guy who can do 80 damage on a charge?"

[malyss]

How does 3E get 'I'm a weakling who can barely get out of bed yet I adventure for some reason' any better? I remember people making THE EXACT argument against 3E because ALL character classes raise their Base Attack Bonus as they level up - some guy on rpg.net hated it because he wanted to play a scholar who never made a melee attack in his life.

It's an inane argument for the fact that I never see people talking about how great their gimped PC is. Do you ever see anyone writing about 'oh man I made this fighter with flashbacks, a bad back and ulcers - he is so deep and awesome to roleplay as' or do you always see people "oh I made this badass fighter/samurai/barbarian/prestige class X guy who can do 80 damage on a charge?"

Maybe I'm not reading it right, but in 3E there is variable base attack bonus increases whereas in 4E it is essentially 1/2 level plus main stat plus X item bonus. That makes the default capabilities of the various classes more comparable (c'mon - you have been saying how balanced it is, and this is a perfect example of that balance).

If someone argued that his scholar shouldn't have any improvement on base attack because he never throws a punch, he should be reminded that base attack is also used for touch attacks (melee and ranged) and it is assumed (at least by me) that after years of adventuring, whether you throw a punch or not, you would have a better understanding of the dangers around and how to react to them.

I personally have seen rewarding play from both types of characters. Sure, the min/max player will always prefer to play Conan over some weakling, but that doesn't preclude others from playing their characters however they want.

[AmishNinja]

I see his point about 4E, but he should really be saying 'D&D' instead of singling out 4th edition here. D&D has always worked on a class system that essentially forces your character into 'packages'. It's true that 4E does this a little bit more than 3E. But if you want your characters to be 100% custom based on your concept, there are far better systems for it than 3E/pathfinder/ad&d, and they're usually a bit more gritty to boot. Burning Wheel for example definitely fits this bill.

But if your goal is to play a game about heroics and getting into fights 8 times a day, D&D is where it's at.

[clockworkjoe]

There's still some BAB advancement in 3E - the worst progression eventually gets +10 BAB by level 20. But the point was the guy bitched about how his immersion was RUINED because he HAD to improve his BAB.

But my main point stands - 3E is no better at building a gimped/disadvantaged PC than 4E and it's stupid to even argue that a system is bad because it doesn't let you build a gimped PC in the first place - D&D has never been about that and if you want that either house rule it or play GURPS.

Criticizing 4E on this basis is incredibly fucking stupid.

[Dawnsteel]

I don't understand how the base attack bonus improvement mechanics affect the way you roleplay your character.

If you build a scholarly guy who has never swung a weapon in his life, why are you likely to do so in the course of a game?  Nobody's making you whack that kobold in the beans, buddy.