![]() ![]() But it meant accepting that D&D does have combat at its core. The idea of defining combat roles helped prevent a lot of those problems. ![]() That’s great because, in the past, we’d run into a lot of problems with classes that could do absolutely everything, classes that were highly specialized, and classes that basically did lots of things poorly. As opposed to the Fighter, who could be a Controllery Defender or a Strikery Defender. The Paladin, for example, was a Defender, but he was a Leadery Defender. ![]() So, eventually, you could look at each class in terms of its primary Role and a couple of optional secondary roles that flavored how the class accomplished its primary role. And that is how we ended up with Power Sources and Roles. And also how to differentiate them in terms of story. Recognizing that most D&D games are action oriented, the designers sat down and tried to come up with a way to design classes to ensure interesting ways to participate in combat. Classes were designed not just based on tropes and archetypes, but actually around what they would accomplish in the game. There was a very clear and solid design philosophy behind absolutely every game element. And, frankly, they’ve never talked about it that much since.Īnd that was, to me, the great strength of 4E. And the designers talked a lot more about their design philosophy than they ever had before. I consumed every podcast, interview, preview book, article, everything I could. And that is something I greatly appreciated. And how each shores up the other.ĭ&D 4E thought long and hard about the gameplay experience. It isn’t just story, it isn’t just gameplay, it’s BOTH. And that’s because I’m actually about the game experience AS A WHOLE. The other half is digging deep into numbers minutiae. Half the s$&% I write on this website is a study in story structure for the modern gaming. I love action gameplay and combat, but I also love engaging stories, emotional connections, and all that crap. I have a lot of snapping turtles in me, but I also crap out a lot of gold nuggets. If you’ve been reading my website (and this would be a weird place to start if you haven’t), you know that I too am a very complicated mixed bag. There was actually a lot that I loved about the game. Because I’m a man’s man and I only watch movies with topless lesbians riding motorcylces that are on fire while shooting guns at each other. Or it would be, if I was capable of human emotions and actually cried over movies with cartoon fish or any bulls$&% like that. It was like the f$&%ing Pixar movie of D&D editions. The whole game was an emotional roller coaster for me. If it were a literal bag that you could stick your hand in, it would be filled with gold nuggets and snapping turtles.” And that’s kind of how I feel about 4th Edition. In his episode Test Drive 3, he described the game as “such a mixed bag. And I think the best way to describe my personal feelings toward 4E was to quote one of my favorite YouTube video series: Ross’ Game Dungeon. ![]() I guess, since it’s been eight years since we met and around five years since we broke up, I can finally talk about the ex. Now that a bit of time has passed, are there any parts or aspects of D&D 4E that you appreciate or even miss more than when you actively played the system? And what things are you glad to have left behind? Are those the reasons you quit the system in the first place for? Peter der Verräter (Among Many Others) asks: But expect me to continue to work through the Ask Angry Backlog as well until I can get caught up to the point where I can do Ask Angry as a standalone article every week again.Įnjoy. I assure you they will both be plenty meaty. So, also this month, expect to see a neat article about how to create NPCs for your game and something else that I’ll disclose later. So, I figured now is a good time to say the final word on it.Ĭoming up in the next month, I’m going to keep doing a few Ask Angry Blitzes to clear the questions, but I will alternate between those and other feature articles. But this question – which I found in the pile – was such an interesting question and there was so much to it, that I ended up blowing a huge number of words on it. It’s a question that A LOT of people have asked me over the last few years. I was originally going to do another Ask Angry Superblitz this week because I still have a huge number of questions. ![]()
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