My first go as a player in 4e
Adam Dray:
Hey, Nolan.
Here's what I think is happening: You wanted to play one kind of game, and 4E can't give it to you but that's what you had. Worse, you had 4E but weren't even playing it for what it is. That made the rules powerless to propel your game forward, leaving the DM to push it--nay, force it.
Making a character with such a strong back-story like you did suggests a pretty strong creative priority, right? You have this young woman who doesn't paly games entering a game to find her brother. You want some kind of game that tests her to see what she's willing to do to find her brother. As you say, you want the game to ask you, "How much is this worth to you."
At the very least, the combats in the 4E game have to mean something. What happens if your character dies? Do they die in the "real world," too? or can you just make up a new character and come back in? At the very least, you need to start over at 1st level, so progress is lost, but that's only meaningful as a sacrifice if there's some penalty for taking too long to save your brother, right?
What you're looking for is a way to make a meaningful story NOW, through the process of play, and not wait until some victory condition to say "and then I saved my brother." Really, saving your brother is a vehicle, but the choices your character makes along the way are the real story. D&D 4E will not give you that out of the box. It takes conscious effort on the part of the players and GM to do that, because it's the wrong tool for that job.
4E is exceedingly good at making TACTICAL choices matter. It's a great tool for a certain kind of play, but you didn't care about it. The battles it set up, you called "set pieces" that were "like playing monopoly with your family." You went through the motions but weren't creatively invested in the choices you were making.
Now the thing to figure out: were the other players invested in those tactical choices? Maybe the rest of the group sees this game-within-a-game setup as interesting window dressing for their set-piece battles. Maybe they really enjoy the character builds, the battles, the tactical choices, the leveling up with more character build options. If this is what the game is about for them, then trying to change it is going to make you sad.
On the other hand, if they're not enjoying it either, maybe there's a way to fix it. Maybe they're frustrated players who have the 4E hammer and everything looks like a nail to them. Talk to them about what kinds of games they want to play, how they want to approach play, and figure out what kind of choices they want to matter. There are games that will reward the kind of play that you want. D&D 4E rewards clever tactical play and clever strategic character builds--that is, game mastery. You need something different (or you need to embrace the kind of play that 4E offers).
I suspect I understand what your play priorities are, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm comfortable saying that you went into 4E with one idea of how play should go but it can't deliver that easily. I'm not comfortable yet recommending specific games you might like better, and there's no guarantee that your friends want to play those games, or play that way. Are you interested in going down the rabbit hole and trying to figure out what games might help?
masqueradeball:
Yeah, I mean, I knew going into this that this wasn't the game for me... I'm playing it for the company and so that I can be playing something and as long as the game is enjoyable I think I'll keep it up. I think my post failed to convey how much I knew/know what I was/am getting to.
Adam Dray:
Oh! Well, my best advice in that case is to figure out how the other people want to play the game and play it that way. Embrace the D&D-ness of it. Get into your character build and make every combat count.
Callan S.:
Well, as I hypothesized before with the whiff rolls, D&D 4e actually undercuts clever tactical play (through it's 'make a plan - now roll to see if the plan is made moot' mechanism) rather than rewards and is something you can embrace. Gamism wise it's kind of 'thorny' to embrace - I think my partner found that as well, with the many rolls undercutting any forward planning. She really likes the card game lunch money, as a comparison. She even said that while the cards are drawn at random, she can plan with what's in her hand. In D&D, roll low, the plan is moot.
Nolan, at a guess I'd say you were quite naturally gravitating towards something gamey/gamist as your thing to do while enjoying company. I think that'd work, except the activity itself is counter gamist. Mind you, I think monopoly to a certain extent is counter gamist as well (like when all properties are bought but no one owns a set (which is quite likely) - so it's this slow, slow attrition game based on...fortune, again. Fortune...are you a bad puppy?), so perhaps I'm out of some sort of loop? Anyway, I think if you play your going to gamist gravitate, only to run into more thorns. Perhaps knowing that will help you avoid them - if not, I don't think the game is good for you. It'd be like eating a meal with them for the company, but you have a certain allergy to something in the meal. It's just mildly poisoning yourself for company. Except it's your brain rather than liver that has to work through it. Bit close to home, that.
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Nolan, interesting thread. I only played 4E once, but I had the same “Captain America” feeling where the rules were leading so strongly that the fiction did not really seem to catch up, like, ever. Buffs, debuffs, marks, taunt-tanking, healing surges, shifting, encounter powers, it seemed just too disconnected. That’s why I actually thought that the “game within a game” idea was pretty fucking cool. Kudos if they actually keep it up as a meaningful “second layer” of fiction, and not just a pretense for silly adventures that don’t make much sense.
I know little of the edition war (old school vs. encountardization or how they call it) and it’s probably not all that relevant to this discussion, but I did get the feeling that in 4E it was hard to introduce meaningful fictional situations. On the other hand, the combat system did seem fun enough, and I actually know quite a few Narrativist inclined players who are currently playing 4E. They claim it’s not as fun, but also way more forgiving than a good Narrativist game, essentially they don’t have to invest much, they can play with mediocre players, and it’s still okay. I haven’t really made up my mind about that yet.
Concerning the whiff factor, I think it’s understood that with the number of combats you are going to play through, at some point the law of large numbers will apply. Only half kidding.
- Frank
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