Throw The Man A Rope

Poor Arkhein over on his blog Rather Gamey. The man is getting savaged for the choice of wording he used in a post where he was letting off steam from the frustrations he has as a DM with 4th edition D&D.

I will continue to keep my promise not to edition war. And at the same time I will own my comments about how I feel with regard to DMing and playing different editions and games.

You won't have me saying they're bad, or wrong, or not fun because those statements would not be true. I can have fun playing and DMing other editions however I will not shy away from letting it be known that I find it more to my liking for various reasons to DM Labyrinth Lord currently. In a recent post I explained some of those reasons.

Likewise, I fully understand where Ark was coming from in his post.  It didn't require an actual grain of salt for me to grasp the meaning and feeling behind the words he set to pixels in his post. Hopefully his readers will ease up a bit on the guy.

I will admit to finding some of his post and many of the comments amusing.

Here is a little something more from my personal perspective on 4e.

The monsters. The ideas and methods presented can be borrowed and morphed for use as a DM in the old school games to good effect. Not everything they can do is written down and shouldn't be or you'd have to write individual tomes for many of them just to cover the many ideas for ways to play them.

Something I encountered from some other gamers I know. They were laughing about the vampire being able to be out in daylight. Hello . . . some vampires from movies and literature could go out in daylight, being weaker doing it, but could do it.  On the other hand, the minion vampires are rightly prohibited. Like a fart through the flame of a butane lighter, bamf, gone in a big stinky flash. If I want a monster to do something that might seem uncharacteristic you better believe I'll do it, and there may be an explanation, though it might not be obvious.

Ark is right when he expresses that from the player side you can find yourself focusing too much on the powers presented instead of using your imagination and thinking.

That was how I felt when I was playing and had gotten up to 6th level with a character. I felt I was burning out, getting into a rut. Yes, that hangs partially on the player, but there is something to the fact that the mechanics and presentation lend themselves to that style of play. It felt like Magic: The Gathering, and honestly, while I like that card game, that isn't how I wanted my D&D to feel.

This isn't a bash against 4e. It has its place and a good number of people like it. That's cool. Good! We should all be able to enjoy different styles of games and to hell with people bashing us for our likes and dislikes.

Further, if someone needs to blow off steam and steps on a few toes, sure it might sting a little, but it heals. And Arkhein even owned the way his wording could effect readers. Good on him.