williamimm

A problem with 4E was too few player options and too much balance.

As someone who played and otherwise loved that system, that hit the nail right on the head. I felt that to get what I want in the system, I had to pick from a fixed list of best options and justify them for my character with lots and lots of reflavoring. A nice tool, but it's quite overwhelming to use for nearly every single feature.

It was really only when I went on to other systems that I really felt comfortable knowing and playing what I want, instead of a character whose gameplay and story was extremely segregated.

Meaningless choice is worse than no choice at all. And there were a lot of meaningless choices in 4e, ones that Character Optimization had to puzzle out. And you risk being accused of min-maxing if you use their recommendations or guides in your games.

You wouldn't have a ranger in 4e without Twin Strike and multi-attacks, and you wouldn't have a sorcerer without Flame Spiral and its real powerful multi-attack. Come to think, every striker and damage-dealer in the game would converge onto a singularity. In which the only choice is for more attacks per turn, beating out even attacks with huge amounts of dice rolls.

Yeah. Character Optimization was pretty much a must in order to really enjoy what the system had to offer. Not to mention Essentials and onwards, which seemed like it was designed to be run in complete isolation from regular 4e. And yet, it mixed and caused a lot of power creep within the system as a whole. There was also something of an attitude against custom content due to "balance", at least in most games I've tried playing 4e in.

I'm making a system that uses 4e's power and combat system and refines further refines it into one cohesive system. I touched upon that more within my actual AMA question.

Have any advice for someone who's working on his own tabletop RPG with a friend? It was a labor of love over the past few years. Much like 13th Age, we've decided to base our system on D&D 4e and 3e, but in our case extending and refining the tactical combat system 4e used and worked from there to create a system fit for storytelling. Different direction, but hopefully a similar fun result for a system we hope to put on Kickstarter.

And I have to say, I'm glad that we both managed to play the system you and Heinsoo made. I've first heard about it from RPG Crossing, an online site for playing tabletop RPGs via forum posts. Other members there touted it as a spiritual successor to 4e, and I have to say that playing it resulted in my absolute favorite game on that site, realizing a character I loved in the best way possible. Here's the game in question.

See you and Heinsoo at Gameholecon! I'm attending your panel there. And sorry if my response is rather long, there's a lot I wanted to say when I had the chance.

EDIT: Also, do I have permission to x-post this to r/13thAge?

Do you happen to be the same Inuvash225 as the one on RPG Crossing? If so, I'm "William Imm" there, and your reasoning above might explain why you didn't choose to commit to applying to my Scales of War game there. Guessing that my friend Khodexus's character was too untested and you were worried about those power issues that character might have. Most of the people that were willing to accept custom content were new DMs (myself included).

And now Khodexus and I are using ideas hinted at in the game in our own system, using our lessons learned from working with 4e to make the system the best it can be. The crash course in game design and development we both got by making custom content and in the development of the system really helped both of us.

I'm always willing to talk more about the system, in case you want to ask me here or on RPG Crossing.