I've sat watching the 4D roleplaying crowd for several days, trying to determine the merit to their gaming style, if any. I didn't really find any at all. No link this time, but they aren't hard to find, there's only like half a dozen of these morons in existence.
For those unaware:
How 4Ders see things:
1D: Wallflower players, authoritative GMs playing their characters for them.
2D: Semi-wallflower players, semi-authoritative GMs playing their characters for them, but to a lesser extent than 1D. This is what 3D-4D players think most everybody else looks like.
3D: Players who are constantly in character (no table talk allowed). GMs narrate and are along for the ride, never communicating any systemic elements. Players and GMs can't talk to one another.
4D: Same as 3D but some GMing is actually performed by players. GMs must bend to their whims and incorporate all player-generated elements.
How I look at these:
1D: Bad RPGing. Wallflowers need to get out of their shell, GMs need to prod them toward
2D: Bad RPGing. This is normal for youtuber crowds, it makes sense that 3D-4D crowd thinks everybody games like this, because this is all they can see outside of their bubble.
3D: Not RPGing. The G is now silent. They are roleplaying, but with nothing to back it up. They are effectively not playing a game anymore. This is hard to achieve because it's human nature to actually want to play the game you're supposedly sat down to play. They also have a lot of nonsense rules I'll get to shortly in order to achieve this "dimension" of play.
4D: Collaborative storygaming. Not only are they not playing a game anymore, the GM's role hardly needs to exist at all. They could use writing prompts to generate scenarios and have the GM FKR every roll.
I propose the next step for this movement is 5D, where the GM ceases to exist along with whatever cursory system they've been pretending to play since 3D. So the problem is really simple, they decry a few bad styles and in turn believe their own bad style is a good style or even The One True Way. I'm not a person to shy away from The One True Way, I know it exists and the above are all examples of people not properly learning the correct lessons from seeing bad roleplaying game sessions.
So what am I really proposing? That there's a space between 2D and 3D where actual good RPG play happens. That nobody on YouTube actually does it. Where players own their characters but the GM owns the world. Which is the correct way of things. The original way of things.
But first, let me dismantle the argument of these 4D players.
The Sin of Second Person - 4Ders see a GM starting a sentence with the word "you" as a step too far under most circumstances. They believe that this is the GM roleplaying a character for a player. And it can be if the GM uses the phrases "you think" or "you know" or "you feel", with the latter not representing the character physically touching something and trying to determine what it feels like. Apparently the word "you" is kryptonite to the immersion of the 4D player. My response is "bold of you to come right out and tell me your weakness". If your immersion is that weak, it's not worth having. Let's look at an example interaction they always bring up:
1-2D GM: "You detect a faint smell of smoke" or "You smell smoke"
3-4D GM: "The faint scent of smoke is present"
Now a normal person sees these as the exact same statement, other than the above being more direct and the below more passive. A 4D player scoffs at the audacity of the GM accurately explaining what a character smells. Who are they to say what a character smells? The sane answer is, they are the player's eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and fingertips into the world the GM creates. In the real world, if the scent of smoke fills the air, I have no choice but to smell it. It's not an agency thing. This is not the GM telling the players that they intentionally and egregiously sniff some person they just met. It's not a statement of a character's behavior or belief. It is simply what is. Don't like the phrasing? Stop being a pussy.
This is where 3D and especially 4D players fall on their fucking face. The general idea with RPGs is that there is one objective setting that all the characters are a part of and living within. The GM owns it. The 4Ders themselves would probably tell you that this isn't the case or needn't be the case, but the lack of a unified, single shared fictional world means effectively that 4D players are actually solo RPGing with similar prompts provided by the GM, with mild overlap when their characters interact. And because Solo RPGs aren't RPGs, they are creative writing exercises, then 3D and 4D is therefore not playing RPGs. They are participating in different forms of creative writing exercises. A group activity, to some extent, but not a game.
3/4D players don't game. Which they would likely proudly proclaim. But not taking part in a hobby is a dumb way of saying you're doing the best a hobby can. Checkers players don't tell chess players how to play chess, or critique their playing of chess. This is because they understand that they play an entirely different game. 4Ders aren't even playing a different game, they are doing an entirely different activity all together. So a more apt comparison is kayakers. People who kayak don't tell chess players how to play chess. Ok, that's not really fair. People who buy a chess board as part of decor for their apartment don't tell chess players how to play chess. Those that do are rightly scorned for doing so. Yeah, that's the best metaphor. Also explains why these douchebags get scorned so often.
Furthermore the 3/4Ders will go out of their way to say they don't play RAW. It seems like they pick up a system and use two baseline mechanics - one for task resolution, one for damage. This seems needless as they could very will just FKR it and not even pretend to play any game. This is one of the two methods of play they could end their little evolution of successive dimensions. The other I already brought up.
Lastly comes an explanation of social contracts. Where the real game begins. Because that's how all games begin. I don't just grab off a shelf and start playing it with my family. No we need legal proceedings first. This is the element of 4D which betrays how bad this style of "play" is because it's not play if a contract is involved. Contracts denote WORK. They denote having a boss. Who's the boss? Who gets fucked over? That's what a contract is really for. Reading through it or seeing what's up above, you can easily see this is yet another player pussification style, cucking GMs for all the wrong reasons. These 4Diots should just pretend to play 5E, the culture around that game already cucks GMs, they'll fit right in. No, that's not fair. 5E players actually play their shitty build-culture/endless-chargen game.
I almost want to sit down with these morons and ask a basic question they'll never truthfully answer because it will make them look bad. Very simple: Where is the fun for the GM? It doesn't exist in 4D on purpose. I'm sure they'll have a dumb answer that will ring inherently false, because like every other shitty playstyle it exists because players want to have their cake and eat it too. Pussies. Boomtown!
EDIT: I found out at the turn of September one of if not the dominant 4D YouTuber passed away. While it doesn't change my mind in any way, it's worth mentioning that I don't want anyone who I disagree with about elfgames to suffer this fate. Vaya con dios, good sir.
