Right. So pornomancers and blood magicians and all that sort of thing are weeded out, correct?

the pornomancers effectiveness rests on how the seduction (con skill, seduction specialization) rules are read...

and blood magic is found in street magic, under the "magical threats" chapter, so its not really something that should be in the hands of PC's anyways...

There's also the question of spotlight time and spotlight quality. If two people havesimilar characters, except one's just better in every way, it's going to be hard to give the secondary character decent spotlight time.


Shouldn't be, and really are, are different things. Some books aren't as bad as others, but RC really raises the bar. Even excluding that, just the sheer amount of equipment, augmentations, and magical toys make an advanced character more versatile and powerful than a BBB book alone one. Heck, a r6 Emotitoy alone makes a huge difference.
Blood mages, yes, by fiat. Pornomancers, no: I've seen one run in a Missions game.

While that may be true, spotlight hogging is hardly a mechanical problem of SR4, it's a problem with the group/players. I recently played in a demo-game, as a pre-gen'd hacker, while another player, a young girl, played a pre-gen'd technomancer. Stats-wise, my character was just that much better than hers. Also, she was new to SR and didn't know anything about the handful of tricks that would have made her horribly built char at least able to draw to breast height with the hacker. AND I, as a person, was much more outgoing, while she was mildly intimidated by the whole thing and stayed very quiet.
Now guess what: The whole group actively helped her to find her place and do some cool shit. I actively took a back-seat at times, and even got some decent RP mileage out of it. AND we did it so that everyone in this group of people who got together to play a game and enjoy themselves could have a good time.
Now, of course, I AM pretty much the template of awesome, but in this case, I don't think what I did was so out of the ordinary...

Her being a young girl might have had something to do with the ammount of help she recieved. P&P RPGs have mostly been a male hobby for a very long time and gamers tend to try harder to get the girls who play to have fun so they keep playing.

Not saying that most groups wouldn't have helped a young guy ether. The future of our hobby depends on new bood coming in to keep the market alive. Or maybe it's just that my old college gaming group has strongly slanted my views since they are the guys (and girls) who started MechaCon, run demo games at Cons for dozens of different systems (several P&P, Starwars Minis, WH & WH40k, Battletech, etc), and are almost all skilled GMs.

A group willing to pass the spot light around, especially if you can get the older experienced players involved in passing it around, will insure that the newbies and first timers enjoy their first several games. Which will hopefully lead to them getting into the hobby. Which will get more sales for people like CGLs, allowing them to stay in biz and keep producing more awesome products to blow all my spare cash buying.

I guess I can't sympathise with the orginal poster. Personally my expendable income for things like books, video games, and RPG is not so limited that I would look at a book and think "hmm thats nice, but $60 is to much." Especially considering the amount I am willing to plunk down on other enterntainment items (like video games).

Put more simply I definetly shop for entertainment items on Quality, not price. Often times I find myself thumbing through some suppliment or other but then declining to purchase it based upon the quality. The fact that I might have said book for $5 instead of $60 dollars doesn't even enter into the equation. Indeed I would probably spend much more then the current market-price for a well laid-out book with insightful rules, art, and material (don't tell the publishers that though!!).

But in the end the RPG is a fairly diverse and healthy industry. And micro-economic decisions like mine and the original posters are not that important in the grand scheme of things. Its and industry (unlike many others) that lives and dies based upon supply and demand. If a publisher makes and prices what fans don't want, there sales go down. If they make and price what fans want, sales go up. Simple as that. There's no need to get into all sorts of meladrama about so-n-so 'killing' the industry. I feel fairly confident that as long as there is a demand for RPG books (and as long as I am alive there probably will be) there will be suppliers of said books. Hell if it all went belly up, I would be making the things myself just for my own personal demand!

----

On the tangent this thread has gotten on to, I think some people worry entirely to much about the way other people play their games. If a group is having fun playing Shadowrun, D&D (2nd, 3rd, or 4th ed) more power to them. In the end there really is no way to objectively judge the value of any RPG system, pretty much every facet of it comes down to a personal subjective judgment. And so if somebody likes that system, or if somebody doesn't, why should you care?

I have no qualms with the players, I have qualms with the game.

For instance, this is a very well done flash movie that just so happens to capture unequivocally a D&D character concept I've been trying to design, build, and play for several years.

While it takes roughly a ECL of 8 or 9 to do in 3.5 it's doable, and comes out pretty well.

It's impossible in 4e. And that's not counting the fact that Monks as a class don't exist yet (or the right slew of items! 3.5 at least overloads some slots with multiple items you want, but 4e has you swapping out items every 3rd level for something radically different).

Items are crap, feats are shit (and you still haggle over them like they mean something), and the classes are cookiecutter identical, and race means nothing.

Balance and Diversity are inversely proportional. 3.5 had lots of diversity and it was possible to make obscenely broken characters (I made an ECL 20 character that could only be killed by a wish (or Holy Word because Holy Word is inherently broken): Half-Howling Dragon Crystaline troll as the "base" creature meant that it only took subdual damage), but it was fun, plus most of these builds never come up in rational play.

4e? Complete opposite end of the spectrum. I was expecting rule fixes, monster tweaks, "fun at all levels" and a logical CR system. What I got was a 1 dimensional game (that of those 4 things it has 1: monster tweaks (hydras no longer regenerate heads WTF), 1st level is no more fun to play in 4e than it is in 3.5: you still have no neat tricks, no hit points, and no damage output).

It might have fixed the CR system, I didn't stick around long enough. The first campaign module used [Party Expected Level] + 5 non-solo creatures as solo encounter boss monsters, which was entirely not the point. Second module had no story what so ever. We split up in the one town, each hit a building, and in 5 minutes had found everything that was to be found. Which was to say, 1 lead on the main quest, and a sidequest for a piece of worthless junk (the NPC said it's a powerful magic item, it turns out to not only not be powerful, but not even magical), and...that's it.

Right don't get me wrong I understand and agree with most of your arguments about 4ed (way off topic for dumpshock, but whatever). But in the end any judgement about a RPG really does come down to subjective reasoning. Because the only way to measure the success or failure of any RPG system is the degree to which it enables you and your friends to have fun playing it. And that will ultimately be a subjective decision on your parts. We may all have different opinions on it, and there may be a great deal of value in discussing them, but in the end no-one can really be right or wrong about what system is best, as it is ultimately a matter of opinion, not anything you could make a true objective deceleration about.

What sometimes urks me is the 'your doing it wrong' meme some gamers seem to take. It seems to be directed mostly at D&D players most of the time, but I've seen it labeled at all sorts of groups. For my part, WOD and what not is not my thing. And I think LARPing is a pretty silly affair. But I would seem pretty stupid of me to look over at a group of people obviously enjoying what they are doing and say, "Hey! You guys over there! Stop it! STOP HAVING FUN! Your doing it wrong!!!" But alas, what with the Internet enabling anonymity and all, this concept doesn't seem to sink in all that well to a great many people.

And with that I return you to your regularly scheduled XYZ is destroying the industry thread.

I don't have fun with 4e. When talking to other people about it, I state my case and give my reasons, and I never tell them they're doing it wrong. In fact, I even ask questions ("How do you find it fun, despite XYZ?")

LARPing also confuses the hell out of me. I won't stop other people from doing it, but I have declined invitations to join in. Only one person ever managed to actually change my mind about it (to the point of, "ok, maybe that WOULD be fun" but never into going; I have of course, forgotten what the reason that changed my mind was).

It would be nice if the books I want were cheaper, but I don't think that they are too expensive as is. A book that can be used for years costing about as much as a trip for two to the movie theater, or going out to eat at a nice restaurant, or the monthly fee for internet. $25-$45 a pop really isn't that big of deal when you look at where else you can dump the cash and get a helluva lot less out of it. Anyway, I can think of a lot more expensive hobbies, like miniature gaming, counsel gaming (what like $300-500 for the system and $20-80 per game and $17-40per month for highspeed), hunting, skydiving etc. Actually the only things that really have the lowest impact on the luxury expensive I can think of is fast food and cheap hookers.

Because, if you have overlapping specialties, nearly every time your character might act it would be a better choice to have the other character act instead. Even if you're on the same team as Mr. Awesome, being the spare tire sucks.

It isn't just about spotlight time, it's about being useful at all. Our group had this problem early on when I had a well-optimized Rigger (SR3) and our streetsam found himself mostly on cleanup duty. In this case the solution was easy (more focus on combat indoors, away from outside-facing windows), but it isn't always that easy, especially when the characters are essentially the same modulo the gear and rules they had access to in chargen.

~J

So specialize in an area that isn't covered. Feel like your character isn't getting any spotlight time amongst the combat junkies? Play a face and use Charisma skills to achieve your goals. It's only reasonable to assume that if your character is the same as every other character at the table your spotlight time is minimal. If that even matters as there are no "winners".

As I continue to beat this dead horse, I'm curious as to what starting equipment a Build Point-based Missions character can take from the supplemental core rule books that would make him so horribly uber in comparison to a character that pulls equipment only from the BBB. Emotitoys seem to be the only piece mentioned.

OK, first...I will out right admit, there is only one game I have ever picked up, looked through, and did not buy the core book, and that is Cyberpunk v3. I looked through it, said "Shadowrun is more realistic," put it back on the shelf, and never bothered to look at it again. I have gotten D&D4E, PHB and DMG, I even have the subscription to the insider, but..I have never purchased the monster manual...I just cannot bring myself to. I build characters in it, but nothing really captures my imagination. They are all just combat stats. Which is not where I feel an RPG should go..I mean, it should have options for NON-COMBAT characters who are PCs. I know in my 3.5 game world, I made a custom class for the setting: the Courtesan. I could do that. WIth D&D Miniatures the RPG, er, I mean, 4th Edition D&D, I cannot do that...

D&D really is coming across to me as "Look at us! We are the old man of RPGs! Everyone KNOWS US! They will come and play! Here..let us make the whole thing better suited to using our Miniatures game! No-one will notice! Hey..how do we handle stuff like dancing? Nah..no-one is ever going to have a game set around the PCs having to find an assassin at a royal ball! They just kill things!" (I HAVE played in games like that..admittedly it was a Birthright Campaign...but...)

The best games are ones like Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Exalted, Scion, etc where the designers realize that your character might not necessarily be an combat monster, or even a combatant at all! D&D has always been combat centric, of course, but, you know, 3rd and 3.5 actually was coser to a true RPG. d20 Modern, great system. Star Wars Saga Edition..Absolutely wonderful!(It actually converted me, an old WEG die hard to it..and that takes some effort!). I never dreamed I would end up suggesting trying a d&d 4th edition game(just to try the system out, see if it was really any good), and have my table of 8 players go "No thank you...Hey! Dead Reign looks cool! What about the Babylon 5 RPG? How about Mechwarrior 2nd Edition? Heck, what about gouging our eyes out with hot pokers? Those all sound a WHOLE lot better then 4ED." Note: not a SINGLE person at my table wanted to try D&D 4th Edition. To me, 4thED has nothing to do with the hobby. It has EVERYTHING to do with 4th Edition.

However, I think that the biggest issue with the hoby, and why D&D is the big face of the hobby is very simple: D&D has a fricking HUGE budget. I mean, how many books did they put out last month? How many are they putting out next month? They are putting out so many that, even if I wanted to keep up with the line and own every book, I just could not. I like the stately release rate of Catalyst, where I can be sure that, if it is out, I can get it. I know that the month it took my FLGS to get alliance to send Unwired did not get me rediculously and impossibly behind. Heck, even Star Wars Saga Edition has a well paced release schedule, and I can say that I own every book int he line at present. But, 3-4 books a month? At 40 bucks a pop? Who the hell is Wizards marketing D&D 4th edition to? Not college kids, not high school kids...not anyone with a family...Not anyone who has TIME for the games...(since, you know, taking out a second job just to pay for the game books, the gas to the store, as well as rent, food, power bills, gas to your first job....and that is assuming you are not a college student, who is also need to pay for textbooks, tuition, etc, classes full time, full time job, part time job, studying, home work, papers...)

Some of us like Shadowrun because its more Fantastic. I think when many of you use the world realistic, you mean believable or "matches my views". Calling Inigo Montoya



Roots, Know them
D&D was for miniatures, yo

Am I so old I can live through a full cycle of gaming fashion? Everything old is new again.

And to think, when I first started computing we would allocate processors and memory to users giving each a "VM".

BlueMax
/me pats his 360

The thing that seems to clog most people's minds is this: Dungeons and Dragons, the original, Dungeons and Dragons, was not about deep and involved storytelling. It was about a group of people using their characters as pawns in a maze trying to escape while getting loot and avoiding or killing monsters.

As the game grew older, people began to add other stuff to it. With each successive edition, people added more and more to make the game resemble the other games out there - for instance, as telling stories became more and more popular (curse you White Wolf!) the editors and writers of DnD tried to emulate them by making things more story-riffic.

3.* came along and tried to turn the whole thing into one system to rule them all. Unfortunately, it did a crappy job of doing anything more than what DnD was originally intended for: kicking ass, killing monsters, gaining gold. And yet people tried and tried and tried.

The 4th edition folks said, "y'know what? Screw that. We'll kick this thing old school" and removed all of the legacy materials that were simply trying too hard and made DnD better at what it already did the best: kicking monster ass, escaping mazes, and gaining gold. Possibly, they would save the world while they were at it.

So you have to approach 4e with that goal in your head. 3.*e went for immersion and "storytelling"; 4e went for gaminess. 3.* wanted everything in the world to make coherent sense. 4e said, "screw that, I'm turning on an action flick! Look at that guy dodge sideways with two pistols while doves fly behind him! That's awesome!"

4e wasn't meant to be anything more than what it is. It's not a game of deep and involved storytelling or world emulation. You can do it if you want, but that's your call. The main motivation was to provide a roleplaying game that let you pretend to be an elf kicking ass in a pretend world. If you want a whole world simulation, there's 3.*. If you want dark and tragic tales of boo hoo, go play Exalted. If you want to shoot people in the face....

But if all you want is to sit down with some friends and kick a dragon's and its minions' asses, DnD 4th edition is here, with open arms and a dumbass grin on its face. Maybe it's too miniatures for you. *shrug* Maybe you want world simulation. *shrug*. Maybe you want tragic tales of boo hoo. *shrug* That's not what 4e was built for and yelling at it because it doesn't "do" what you want it to do is really screaming into the wind.

What I love about 4e -

+ A world that was built to resemble classic Dungeons and Dragons. One of the major inspirations for the 4e guys was Keep on the Borderlands. The world is dark. Towns are scattered. Empires crumble. Monsters are everywhere.

+ The base campaign setting is both its own thing and an homage to earlier editions. Not only was Keep mentioned, but the Temple of Evil, Orcus, Vault of the Drow, spelljamming, planehopping...all while the main assumption being that the characters are heroes and will go out and make their mark on the world.

+ Ease of use.

a) It's easy to make a character that is gameable. Not optimal; some people are always going to find X better than Y no matter what, but a lot of the creation "traps" that plagued 3.* as a design goal are gone and you have to actively work to make yourself suboptimal. I created an elf paladin of the god of Knowledge with a knack for history and language and he could still kick just as much ass as the guy who took feats that made his lay on hand or smite abilities better.

Someone also mentioned that race meant nothing: well, race really did nothing in 3.* either. In 4e, when you pick your race you not only gain skill and stat bonuses, you also gain access to racial feats and powers that will increase with level as you as you adventure.

b) It's easy to set up for. Encounter creation: figure out the average of your party level, take that xp total, and use it to "buy" monsters out of the Monstrous Manual. Adjust for party size, party ability, and terrain (which is a big factor in 4e).

c) The monster stats - 3.*e versus 4e.

d) Ease of starting where-ever the heck I feel like starting. Want to do an epic campaign? Pick race, class, adjust your stats and skills using the chart in the back of the DMG, pick out a paragon path and an epic destiny, pick out three pieces of gear - one higher, one equal, and one lower to your level, and money equivalent to another equal level item, and you're good to go.

+ Support. While I don't have a DDi subscription yet, I do hear it's worth it. They come out with playtest material for fan look-over, new classes, new powers and variations, new items, all sorts of interesting stuff. Dungeons been all right, not as good. And they've got the character builder and encounter builder which is getting all sorts of positive reviews from players.

Plus, their published material has apparently been pretty good and they've been putting a lot of effort into getting out to the fans. Again, they're crossing the culture by inviting the Penny Arcade / PVP folks and Wil Wheaton to do podcasts for them, they've got Shelly Mazzanoble to outreach to the interested female gamers, they set up demoes at local shops and have an active interest in PAX. I mean, they're really invested in getting people to try the damn game.

And thus ends my long winded, lunch hour eating post

I think the flaws inherent in any solution predicated on the flexibility and cooperation of the players are self-evident

There are no winners in an RPG (Lies! But I lie to make this discussion go more smoothly), but there certainly can be losers.

~J

But feats suck.

Half Dragons (sorry, dragonborn) get a breath weapon that does (choose str, con, or dex) vs. Reflex, 1d6 damage to a 3x3 square and does an elemental damage of the players choice (I played 1 and a half dragonborn warlords, the first one was PURPLE and breathed a square of LIGHTNING because I could, the second one doesn't count as that game lasted one session).

Feats (hero level):
1) Make the square bigger: 5x5 (ok, that's not too bad...if the breath ever hit and did damage to anything)
2) Gain low light vission (or I could be an Elf or Dwarf and gain the same benefit)
3) +1 to Perception checks (whoop de woo)
(paragon level, breath damage becomes 2d6)
1) d6 damage increased to d10 (decent, maybe).
(epic level, breath damage becomes 3d6)
None.

Four feats. All of them suck. Class feats are similar (ooh~ a +2 to my super special awesome class ability!)
The paragon one is worth taking, as 2d10 is significantly better than 2d6, but you're also 11th level. My 3.5 character got up to 6d8 damage once every 1d4 rounds by that same level, could also be quickened, if the 1d4 wait became a 1d4+2 or something like that.

4e Toughness:
5 HP now, 5 HP at level 11, and 5 HP at level 21.
3.5 Improved Toughness (i.e. better than Toughness, and had no pre-reqs):
1 HP every level, forever, retroactively.

The 4e version is HALF as good as the 3.5 version, and there are no other feats that even come close to being comparable. So 4e feats are half as useful, and you get them twice as often. The worst part is that you have to rely on equipment (EQUIPMENT!) to maintain your relative toHit and AC versus monster stats. A PC's attack goes up once every 2 levels. Monster AC goes up by 1 every level.

By level 10 monsters have +5 extra AC over the player's character growth, before items.

Items do not fill in that extra +5 fast enough.

After items it's more like this: If a player needs to roll a 11 to hit at level 1, at level 10 they'll need a 13, at 20 they'll need a 15, and at 30 they'll need a 17. Monsters need 13 to hit at level 1, 12 at level 10, 11 at level 20, and 10 at level 30.

On the upside every character is tricked out with magic items. Of which he can activate 3 ("Gee, I can't seem to activate this wand, here you try." *ZAP* "I got it just fine, what's your problem?").

And if it was an adventure written by Gary Gygax there was inevitably a dragon that was too large for the cave that it was hiding in.

So you're complaining that D&D 4e is too hard? You don't want non-minion kobolds or other traditionally "easy" monsters to be an actual challenge to lower-XP characters? Because that is how that entire argument reads. I've never cared to roll my dice, slay an entire army, then go chug a Mountain (sorry "Mtn") Dew in celebration. I'd actually like the opposing enemy to put of a fight and make me earn my victory. When my group played 3-3.5 D&D we practically mowed down everything around us. The thrill for me was short-lived. I didn't actually start enjoying D&D for the game rather than the settings until 4e was released.

Perhaps, perhaps not. But I make it a policy not to play games with d-bags. And I seriously doubt there is any system out there that can accommodate out-of-character non-cooperation. Until Catalyst, WotC, whoever start offering up real cash for "winning" an RPG it's always going to be experiential, not competitive. Anyone who can't adapt to that mindset is going to be a problem child. And we all know how cool they are.

Heck I have an equivalent Pornomancer in Missions...
Though I prefer to think of her as a negotiations/con adept. Not the whole seduction concentration thing. Just a smooth talking Dryad.

Heh, the last 3.0 game I ran for my wife & daughters... I was going easy on them. Only 4 Kobolds in a room. The PC party was a DM NPC guide (tricked out to help them as they are all newbies at RPGs) along with two fighters and a mage. Everyone was level 2 except the guide (level 5).

Even with a small bump in their effectiveness through gear and higher attributes, max HP for level, etc, those 4 Kobolds were cleaning their clocks.

Sometimes it just doesn't matter the raw power difference. That wimpy mob with a dagger can still kill you.

Don't get me wrong, Minions are cool, I love minions. The problem lies in the fact that they said, "No more will there be times where the fighter is the only one who can hit a monster (by rolling a 17 or higher), now everyone will be able to hit, and those AC numbers will come down."

Guess what. The "17s or better" are still there, only now everyone else's base attack is higher (except the fighter's).

It's extrememly frustrating to not have a decent (that is, 40% odds or better) of hitting something, especially when every round it's beating the living shit out of you. It's not cool, and it's not fun.

"I've used all my daily's and all my encounters, all I've got left are at wills. I attack the monster. *roll 14* I miss. Next."
"I've used all my daily's and all my encounters too. I attack the monster. *roll 15* I miss. Next."
"All I've got left are at wills. I attack the monster. *roll 12* I miss. Next."
*DM rolls a d6* "All right, it got its encounter back! The monster attacks all *roll 13* of you with it's Blast 10 effect, it gets a 21 (vs. reflex). Everyone take 3d6 *roll 13* 18 damage unless it missed."
"Hit me"
"And me"
"Hit me too, I'm dead."

That sounds like a simple problem of resource management, in this case daily and encounter powers, amongst the players, not an issue with the game mechanics themselves.

I'd have to agree. People need to learn to be judicious in the use of their encounter and daily powers.

I rarely blow my dailies.. Encounters exist to get my rogue combat advantage and when I have it, I use at wills.

I have two characters... both rogues... one's a lvl 10 eladrin rogue in a converted savage tides game

And at level 10... I'm at about +15 to hit with my rogue. +2 dagger +5 for level +5 from dex +2 from the proficiency bonus +1 because I'm a dagger wielding rogue.

My lvl 10 rogue rarely misses.

My other rogue is a drow
At level 4 she also rarely misses... her bonuses are lower, but so are her challenges. And there are so many cool feats to choose for her...

I should confess that I expected this response, but was too lazy to preempt it. I shall atone for my sin.

There's a middle ground between "perfectly and happily adaptable" and "d-bag" (this is the internet, you can say "douche" here). Good planning can avoid this sort of conflict, but good planning can't be relied on; assuming there wasn't good planning (which is presumably the case if two heavily overlapping characters, one optimized and one not, show up to the same table), both players have already gone to the trouble of making a character. They may have spent time on personality and backstory, if they swing that way. They may have already become attached to the idea of playing that character.

Even if the less-optimized player simply whips up a new character, there is a cost that is very real here in both lost time and possible disappointment, and this cost is specifically incurred by not having paid money for books (or, admittedly, found someone else who had they could mooch off of).

Ultimately, that's the argument: a very real cost exists for a player to own fewer than a total set of books (some books can be shaved off if they consistently remain within certain character types). I really don't see how this can be refuted.

~J

With judicious use of powers you still end up in that situation, instead of "I have no powers" it's "I have no powers that help."

For instance, some of a warlord's powers seem to be centered on taking down bosses ("Target loses INT from their AC") but are in fact worthless against bosses (STR vs. AC to hit) and aren't reliable.

Sounds more like a resource management issue. Generally speaking if I'm running a game, it's my decision what books will be available for generating characters. That also means it's my responsibility to ensure that the players have access to the resources that I make available to all the players. Not to mention ensuring that the PCs are made within there concept and not just 'optimized' to exploit the game mechanics. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It all basically comes down to who's running the game and how they run it. If a player's character never gets any spotlight time, it could very well be because I as the GM may be failing to provide challenges appropriate for that character. That's not to say that there isn't times when the player chooses to stay on the sidelines. Some players actually seem to avoid the spotlight, especially when they're new. Even then, giving them the opportunity to make a few crucial roles here and there that contribute to a scenario might get them more in to it.

To which I must ask again: what spells, items or what-have-you's in the supplemental core rule books provide what could be deemed an "unfair" advantage for a PC versus a PC using only what is available from the BBB?

Like I said, the emotitoy seems to be the only bit of non-BBB gear that would give a distinct edge. But it's one item. The non-BBB rulebooks provide diversity but nothing powerfully advantageous over any other piece of equipment a player can take at chargen.

I love these statements and it pretty much puts everything I love abouth D&D4 in a nutshell. Quite simply, my D&D group started out as a ragtag assemblage of minis refugees and tabletop virgins. The 3 minis guys were basically just tired of spending more time and money painting than playing and the tabletop virgins are a pair of 20 year old college girl WoW addicts that like fantasy but said they thought the mounds of 3.x stuff looked like a pain in the ass to get familiar with (Which suits me fine; I hate 3.x). So I bought D&D4 and a big pile of cheap mageknight minis of ebay and it's been smooth sailing ever since. The rules are easy, the setting is fun, the minis guys feel right at home and the girls like their characters a lot. There's a surprising amount of roleplaying going on as well; the minis guys all seem to be the type that constantly injected background stories into each of their Warhammer armies while the girls are basically too chatty not to roleplay.

As for the race issue, I think they did a great, great job. It comes down to playability again. Perhaps you don't get to heavily outperform your buddy for selecting the "right" race anymore, but you can still gain a point or two here and there if you really work for it. Meanwhile, it's a godsend for those who just wish to pick a race for rp reasons without being unduly penalized for it. For example, one of the ladies selected an Elf Fighter on a whim, and it's really a surprisingly good combo even though elves have better Dex and Wisdom bonuses instead of the more stereotypical emphasis on strength and constitution. It hurts her attack bonus by a point, but on the upside, as an elf she can reroll an attack per counter, which compensates nicely. Elves also have a movement bonus which counters the penalty she faces for wearing heavy armor; between that and the Scale Mail specializtion she plans on selecting at level 12, she should have the fathest charging and movement ranges out of the party by far. Not to mention, she's been savvy enough to have selected and retrained for powers that let her shift position at will, an ability that dovetails nicely with the fact that elves can ignore terrain penalties when shifting.

I can't say too much about 4th Ed. D&D myself since I have only skimmed it. From what I've seen I'm not impressed, but that has more to do with personal taste and that they didn't streamline things in ways I hoped they would. I do think the PCs get to many healing surges but I don't think it's a bad idea over all.

As far as role play goes I think you're giving White Wolf too much credit. The only thing WW can really be credited with is making a game that allowed players to play the monsters in a 'gothic' setting. Not to mention that the over all production values were superior then most of the stuff coming out in that period. More or less RP and LARP (I've never found it that appealing either) were hardly new concepts and WW just found a niche that hadn't been exploited yet. After all Call of Cthulhu has been around since 1983 and a lot of those 'D&D horror stories' in the media during that era involved live players. Were AD&D fell behind was that by the mid nineties there was a whole new generation of players that wanted more options for there characters and TSR didn't do that great of job at providing that.

ah, the existentialist vampire...

tho often turned into a superhero in trench coat and top hat...

lol... so true.
By existentialist you mean highschoolish clique psychodrama?

something like that. or maybe i should have used some quote signs...

Whether the number is appropriate or not really depends on how many encounters per day you're having. I have noticed that it feels just about right to perhaps just a touch generous if you're sticking with around 4 to 6 encounters of pretty decent difficulty per day, although those last couple battles can get a bit hairy for the frontliners that take the idea of party meatshield a bit too seriously. This makes sense, since the devs have happily admitted to buildling D&D 4th around roughly that number of encounters; I guess they were basically just having their parties jump straight into a dungeon and taking out several groups of critters over the course of a hard day of adventuring. Of course, the problem there is that 4-6 encounters is a pretty dang arbitrary number that doesn't always make sense if you want to keep things organic and story driven. There's been days where I've felt like I should just drop all pretext and start randomly parachuting dire badgers into party's path just so they'll have burned a few surges before facing the villains.

I had never thought about it this way.

Oh my god, it's so accurate.

Win.

Did you never notice that every World of Darkness game was about puberty and high school?

Your character is thrust into a strange new world (Awakens as a Mage, goes through his First Change as a Werewolf, is Embraced as a Vampire, whatever) that's close to the one he lived in previously but has an added layer of terrifying unpredictability added to it...and in order to survive, he has to identify himself with some big social group/stereotype or another (the preppy Sidhe/Ventrue/Silver Fang, the troublemaking Redcap/Brujah/Get of Fenris, the misunderstood outcast Nosferatu/Sluagh/Bone Gnawer, yadda yadda yadda) and learn to adapt to his new environment.

Nice conclusion, but there's more to it, dont'cha think?

You know, that makes the weirdest amount of sense ever, considering that my WoD heyday was my high school years...

Dream79: I don't think I'm giving White Wolf too much credit. Sure, CoC had been doing deep immersion roleplaying for awhile, but what WW did was make it popular and accessible. CoC is depressing; no matter what, your character is going to die a horrible screaming death, go screaming insane, or end up locked in a screaming nuthouse no matter how much sanity was actually left. WW made horror sexy; when you become embraced, suddenly you're a dark Fabio that can do no wrong and make people want you. It flipped a switch for the younger goth kids and the people who were a little too obsessed with Anne Rice (and now, Twilight) and brought in a big new surge of players. They brought a new approach and outlook on the game, and the times changed.

Oh, I very much noticed that. But I never specifically thought about it in terms of high school, you know? Probably because the whole 'transformation as coming-of-age' was as subtle as a bulldozer, and probably because my favorite games were Mage and Wraith (arguably outliers on the 'I have become alien in a world of men' scale, due to Mages being relatively human, and wraiths being... you know, dead...)

Edit: Also, my high school only had 3 cliques of a discernable 'type': hicks, stoners, wierdos. So I never really got the 'full clique experience'.

Hey Jeramey, how many cliques are at your school?
Oh about a thousand or so.
And how many students?
About a thousand or so.

(Karma for reference)

My take on this is that most of the groups I knew of prior to WW already had been leaning towards higher levels of immersion already. Looking back the popularity of WW had a lot to do with the initial reports connecting Rod Ferrell's little murder spree in Florida to Vampire: The Masquerade. A few months later there was new WW players all over. TSR had already discovered the prior decade that you just can't pay for that kind of publicity. Couple that with the associations the games had with the turmoils of adolescence and high school, you have gold. Well maybe not gold, but at least a dominate role in the RPG industry for what ever that's worth.

This man either never knew, or forgot about the FASA era Sr3 materials. I dont think my copy of Matrix even made it beyond a quick skim thru before pages started falling out.

I hear ya. There's a reason why I prefer picking up hardcover versions of rule books and usually having PDF files for every game book I own. A good example of why would be my Twilight 2000 books. I have two. One that has lots of mileage and is missing a few pages and the back cover, and one that barely leaves its box along with PDFs I use for prep. Books typically aren't built for the level of use and abuse that role players give them.

got to agree there, i at best had the book for 1-2 days before it started dropping pages...

I've only ever really had two books fall apart on me. The AD&D seconds editions players handbook (damn I never thought I'd say it but I miss the 2E period color TSR artwork) and GURPS Magic (which I had the spine cutoff and spiral bound at kinkos).

I think I have a couple other books in the collection that are close though.

BTW D&D 4ed, an edition of D&D without Bards is unlikely to be viewed as a successful edition.

There's a problem with gaming?
Huh, well if there was a problem with gaming it could be:

Overcomplicated Rules
In Shadowrun I use square root when dealing with multiple kilos of explosives. Sure, D&D had THAC0, but square roots? Also, I'm just starting 4th edition SR and, while I realy like it, it's a huge mess of rules. The game isn't very accessible for newbies; even vets like myself tend to be amazed at the insanity of modern game rules.

Instant Gratification
Refer to the above paragraph and think how much easier it is to boot up the computer and play WoW. No studying complex rules (and relearning algebra just to play), no schedule arrangements, no game planning and in the short term, it's way cheaper.

Expense
Stack o books for the gamer that needs all of the fluff? $200. Cost for playing WoW and having access to all the insider info? $15 + Wowhead.com.

Fewer Gamers (?)
With game shops disappearing in some areas and people hiding in their houses (playing WoW, I'm sure) not to mention the demand of real life it can be hard to meet other gamers.

With that said, here's what I feel.

Overcomplicated Rules
Old games had some pretty crappy core rules. Supplementals would try to patch them and then we'd end up with a terribly flawed system that you'd have a binder full of house rules that was thicker than all of the books combined. (Palladium sucked).

Instant Gratification
This has always been a problem and it's nothing new. If it wasn't WoW occupying your time it was something else. WoW is just a convenient scapegoat. Gamers who really want to play RPGs still play.

Expense
$200 is nothing for a good gaming experience. Try several thousand for Warhammer (depending on your nerd level). My D&D 2nd edition collection is huge and cost way over $200. Even 1st edition SR, back in early 90s had tons of books to maximize your fun (and confusion). Inflation sucks. Don't blame RPGs for it. Oh, and my SR4 books are pretty. Though I want Bradstreet pictures. GIVE ME BRADSTREET!!!!

Fewer Gamers
BS. We have tons of gamer conventions now. Besides GenCon I never even heard of cons when I was a kid. And they happen every few months it seems. Oh, and games aren't just for devil worshippers and kooks anymore. Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel and other popular folks say they play or have played RPGs.

In summary, I don't think that there is a problem with gaming. Even though they are more complex I like the modern rules. I play RPGs (SR and D&D) because I like the social interaction and I play WoW when we aren't gaming. Games have always been expensive; I now have the income to afford all the bells and whistles (or I spend it like I do). And I've never seen gamers in such numbers.

GAME ON!!!

Damn Bards to hell!!! And they are in the Players Handbook 2 thats coming out in a week or two.

Yeah. Most of the missing classes are coming in later supplements. No different than any other DnD edition.

Vin Diesel plays RPGs? He's welcome at my shadowrun table any day.

According to the blurb on Wizards website it's only going to include two classes, both of which I've never heard of before. Then again that could just be poor marketing.

There'll be eight playable classes, five new races (including gnomes and devas), five new paragon paths and a three or four epic destinies as well as some of the equipment from Adventure's Vault.

As for poor marketing, they've been talking about all of this stuff since the original set of corebooks came out, with playtests in Dragon, Ampersand articles, podcasts, video interviews, regular interviews, the Penny Arcade / PvP / Wil Wheaton game podcast (in which Wil plays one of the new character classes, the Avenger)...I mean, you'd have had to have your head in a hole to miss it all...