A word from Morgan

[Panda]

I was running Earthdawn during that sportsball thing.

[Etorian]

All I ever do is avoid work. Weekends are for my family and gaming!

[Flowswithdrek]

[LouProsperi]

Hello,

Well, I may be a minority here, but this article does not encourage me. The subtext of this article seems to be that "character optimization is something that all players strive for", and that's something I just don't agree with.

That combined with some of the other previews and comments made by the development team tell me that this edition of ED will represent a very different play experience - one that I'm not convinced will be better. I just fear that the changes coming to the game will rob it of much of its charm.

It feels to me that ED4 is on a path similar to where D&D went with 4E. The game may have been "better" in many ways than previous editions, but in the end, it just didn't feel like D&D. I would hope that D&D 4E would be a lesson for the ED4 team, and not a model to emulate.

That said, I freely admit that I could be wrong (and a part of me hopes I am, since I honestly don't want ED4 to fail).


Take Care,

Lou Prosperi

[etherial]

[Nahor]

[Tanthalas]

[Etorian]

[shiinx]

One man's meat is another man's poison. Our GM often sighs over the high redundancy in abilities. There are quite a lot of abilities that are similar in nature, but have slightly different rules (e.g. the various Impress talents, or the various astral sensing abilities). One the one hand, I can understand the original idea in ED1e to differentiate between them. It makes complete sense from a flavour or world modelling standpoint. But for the sake of smooth gameplay, the rules behind such talents need to be unified. What one should aim for, basically, is to separate flavour from mechanics. Flavour describes how this ability works in the context of the game world, and this can be as diverse as you like, with unique descriptions for each race/discipline/... . However, actual rules should be the same for all of them and follow a general pattern, that is used by each ability. That said, one way to add flavour back into the rules is by making them generic. For example, in the case of Impress, you could say that each class uses the attribute that is most appropriate for an Impression task. For the warrior this might be Strength, for the Troubadour probably Charisma.

[kosmit]