4e / GSL WoTC Interview with Rob Heinsoo

[Shroomy]

Some fairly extensive thoughts on the design of 4e:

Spotlight Interview - Rob Heinsoo

[darjr]

Will read, but I kinda wish they had done it as a podcast.

[MichaelSomething]

That article is quite a read and it seems like it explains the design decisions of 4th Edition. I expect this topic to become very long as people debate to attack/defend the ideas in the article.

[Scribble]

Originally Posted by MichaelSomething

That article is quite a read and it seems like it explains the design decisions of 4th Edition. I expect this topic to become very long as people debate to attack/defend the ideas in the article.

heh... I was kind of thinking that too when I read it.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by MichaelSomething

That article is quite a read and it seems like it explains the design decisions of 4th Edition. I expect this topic to become very long as people debate to attack/defend the ideas in the article.

I am not sure it will generate so much debate simply because I didn't see anything particularly new about 4E's design philosophy in the article. All of those things have been mentioned countless times already - some people think these were good design decisions and others (myself included) think they were bad design decisions. Just about the only thing about design that was new to me in the article is the perception of Rob Heisnsoo that wizard is the most powerful class in 3E/3.5E and it is a sentiment I completely disagree with - I think the most powerful classes are the Cleric class and the Druid class with Wizard coming only after these two.

[Khairn]

As Roman mentions, very little of the design philosophy Rob talks about is actually new or ground breaking, and I find myself agreeing with most of it. Yet despite my agreement and support of those philosophys and goals, I find myself surprised that the end product doesn't completely support the type of D&D I like to play.

[Keefe the Thief]

I agree with almost all of the sentiments and design goals mentioned 100%. No wonder i like 4e so much.

[Negflar2099]

I think this is the kind of article that should have been written when 4e first came out. To my mind it shows a healthy respect for 3e that was lacking in a lot of the early pro 4e hype. It explains the different methodology that the designers used for 4e without being condescending or dismissive. Unfortunately too many designers that wrote articles like this would instead start out by saying something that was pretty much "this is why 3e sucked and this is what we did to fix it."

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm of the opinion that a major contributor to the "Edition Wars" was WotC's abysmal PR and advertising. It was basically aimed at people who don't like old-school DnD and was trying to convince them that they got rid of all the stuff they don't like. In the process they alienated many existing players and caused a bunch of the vitriol themselves.

I mean, really, one of their promotional videos depicted people who don't like the 4E changes as trolls. Whoever thought that was a good idea is a moron and probably shouldn't work in advertising.

They definitely could have handled it better if their PR had been more along the lines of this Design and Development article. It does a great job at clarifying why they made the changes they did.

[SpydersWebbing]

Originally Posted by Hexmage-EN

I'm of the opinion that a major contributor to the "Edition Wars" was WotC's abysmal PR and advertising. It was basically aimed at people who don't like old-school DnD and was trying to convince them that they got rid of all the stuff they don't like. In the process they alienated many existing players and caused a bunch of the vitriol themselves.

I mean, really, one of their promotional videos depicted people who don't like the 4E changes as trolls. Whoever thought that was a good idea is a moron and probably shouldn't work in advertising.

They definitely could have handled it better if their PR had been more along the lines of this Design and Development article. It does a great job at clarifying why they made the changes they did.

That "promotional" video didn't attack the disagreeing people in general, it just attacked the people who like to troll boards, hence the horribly funny image of the people (who I swear they just copied and pasted) as a trolls.

It's a bad pun.

[darjr]

I'm very curious about the 'Traveller' style character generation they played around with. I'd like to see some of that.

[darjr]

Inn fighting D&D 4e character conversion? I wonder if it could actually be used to substitute combat, miniless so to speak?

[Cadfan]

The only thing that I feel is missing from the "every spot is the sweet spot" design is monsters with levels lower than 1.

They kind of need them to make things work right.

Its not a huge issue, but it does mean that your to-hit chances are a little more punishing at level 1 than they will be for most of the rest of the game. You never get the opportunity to fight monsters with easy defenses and low hit points.

Minions sort of fill that role, but not really.

[Merlin the Tuna]

I have to agree that most of this has been discussed to death at this point. It's a good resource to steer people towards if they're already gamers don't frequent boards like these and haven't given 4E much thought, but there's not much here for we of the endless banter.

I do still wish that we had gotten different power progressions based on power source, though. It would've made the distinction of declaring the power sources in the first place a lot more meaningful for me.

[Plissken]

the wizard was all alone as the first practitioner of the controller role and we stayed cautious knowing that we could improve the class later if we needed to.

Joy...more money to burn.

Third Edition D&D is a good game; in fact, it's so good that some of its problems are easy to miss for long-term players—they're just part of how the game works.

Pre 4e release, WoTC = "3RD EDITION SUCKS!"

[Stalker0]

The only thing I'll disagree with his his notion that 1st level 4e feels like 5th level 3e.

I say its just the opposite. While yes 1st level 4e is more survivable, I feel that I have about the options at 8th level 4e as I do at 5th level 3e. Not saying that's bad, just that I prefer higher levels in 4e than I did in 3e, which makes sense given 4e 30 level progression.

[Felon]

Originally Posted by Plissken

Joy...more money to burn.

This was the one part of the article that made me roll my eyes. "We didn't need to sweat getting the class right, because we knew we'd have the option to 'fix it" later--you know, in some splat book".

So basically, power creep is a feature, not a bug. If in the future, wizards wind up pulling all of their at-wills and most of their other resources out of Arcane Power than the PHB, that's actually part of the design.

I can't buy that logic, just because a lot of 4e's inequities aren't that hard to spot. It shouldn't have taken much to look at fireball and realize "hey, it doesn't matter how big the AoE is, 3d6 + Int kinda sucks". So, the solution we get is, just don't pick fireball anymore. The "fix" for old, weak powers is to eclipse them with new powers.

Having said that, I overall think there's little else to have qualms about with Rob's article. He lays out a good case for how 4e contains some genuine improvements.

[NMcCoy]

Ooh, sequel to Three Dragon Ante. Shiny.

[Dragonblade]

The only thing 4e needs, IMO are three things that keep it from absolute gaming perfection:

I want a power refresh mechanic. I hate the entire notion of daily anything. Everything should be balanced per encounter.

I also wish each class had a variant suite of powers that excised all the grid based movement mechanics so that you could play it miniless. I like minis, but sometimes I just don't want to bust out the battlemat.

There should also be a mechanic to speed up ritual casting time and you should be able to cast rituals in combat.

Thats it. Other than that, 4e is my ideal RPG.

As far as edition wars go, it was ultimately inevitable. Everything I like in 4e are the very things that some 3e fans hate, and everything they like in 3e are things I hate and consider bad game design. Its just not possible to make a game system that both sets of fans love since our likes and dislikes are fundamentally incompatible.

[Keefe the Thief]

Originally Posted by Plissken

Pre 4e release, WoTC = "3RD EDITION SUCKS!"

Yes, because talking about the problems of an edition you worked on equals saying it sucks.