Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition

Fifth Element said:

In my experience, it's the players that decide how the game is played, not the system. When discussing the various editions of D&D, at least.

I have found no difference between how my group approaches 4E to how they approach 3E. Other than some of the words used to describe things, the game plays the same. Conversely, I have played AD&D is many different ways in various campaigns (combat-heavy, pure exploration/investigation, political intrigue), so saying that the system determines how the game is played seems incorrect to me.

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Bedrockgames said:

In my experience system effects gameplay a lot. Everything from how long combat takes to the dynamics between characters at the table. Whether you are able to play an epic hero or gritty spy; system definitely has an impact. You can always work around the system but the system itself is the toolbox you draw from. I would say 2E, 3E and 4E all play very differently in my experience.

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You're both right. And the premise (or promise, or promised premise) of 5e is that due to a streamlined and balanced core, with optional add-on modules, you can both play in that same sandbox. Perhaps there is even a way the epic hero and gritty spy can play at the same table?

Crazy Jerome said:

Illusionism, and the immersion for which it is generally deployed, are at odds with the clear and transparent design approach of 4E. This is really the heart of the "irreconcilable difference" expressed in the OP and some of the more forceful rebuttals for and against it. You can have more abstraction or less abstraction, more tactical options or more simple rules, more complex social interactions or more simple ones, etc. For example, no one really dislikes "balance". A lot of people do dislike "balance that destroys the illusion of difference." Such issues can be handled by a modular game. However, you can't simultaneously pull back the curtain and also carefully keep it shut.

So for Next to succeed on that particular issue, it has to walk some kind of precarious tightrope, alternately pulling back the curtain selectively while pretending not to do the very thing it is doing in other places. This is the part that I'm not sure can be pulled off. It is akin to simultaneously running a "magician" convention where half the events are teaching you to be a magician and the other half are performing the shows. How do you keep people who like the illusion from wandering across the hall to see the curtain pulled back in detail? How do you at the same time tell the people that want to be magicians where to go to get the details without encouraging other people to look?

The original answer was that the DM was the magician, while all the players were "audience". They could come up on stage and get cut in half, but not know the trick. This was obviously always in tension in a group game, and has been a bone of contention from the get go. Not least of all, it ignores the fact that some DMs like illusionism and some players hate it.

I don't think that this issue can be solved, but maybe I'm suffering from an atypical surge of pessimism. Thus my solution is to basically run two strands through Next, one dedicated to the immersionists dedicated to clear narrative design, with some elements clearly called out for each style, but sharing a lot of other elements where they can, and readily splitting where they cannot.

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Maybe because everyone in my group has at least tried their hand at DM'ing and thus were always allowed behind the "curtain"... I just don't think this is the issue, and I find it sa little suspect that only fans of 4e seem convinced this is where the problem lies. I don't know, this line of thinking just doesn't feel right to me, but I have no real evidence to disprove it... though in reverse I haven't seen any evidence (except conjecture about what others think) to strongly support it either... I mean in 3.x the rules for PC's and monsters were the same, how is that not being automatically privy to how things work?

Fifth Element said:

Sure, I'll grant that for the first couple of levels at least, 3E generally plays more deadly than 4E. But even that's not universal since it depends greatly on the DM.

But then, since combat is not everything in D&D, differences in how combat works shouldn't be the sole factor in deciding whether something plays the same or not.

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Dude, I never said combat is everything in D&D, I was using it as one example of how rules can and do affect gameplay.

Bedrockgames said:

The rpg market seems to be on the simple to complex to simple cycle as well. I don't think we want a simple escalation of complexity with rpgs.

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Probably. Although arguably RPGs started at medium with games like D&D (and perhaps C&S, and Runequest), and then diverged in both directions.

Bedrockgames said:

In my experience system effects gameplay a lot. Everything from how long combat takes to the dynamics between characters at the table. Whether you are able to play an epic hero or gritty spy; system definitely has an impact. You can always work around the system but the system itself is the toolbox you draw from. I would say 2E, 3E and 4E all play very differently in my experience.

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Can't xp you, but that's pretty much what I've found. Although I'll say that 1e and B-X/BECM D&D play in a very similar manner to 2e. Certainly, the results of characters' attempted actions are a lot closer between the older versions than they are between those and 3e or 4e.

Imaro said:

I mean in 3.x the rules for PC's and monsters were the same, how is that not being automatically privy to how things work?

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That's a simulation rule which is orthogonal to the question of illusionism and immersion. It happens to be one of the places where 4E is slightly more like Basic than 3E is (though it gets muddy with 1E and 2E), and certainly 4E DMs can take advantage of that characteristic to good effect, if so inclined and their players are interested. Simulation can be pursued with immersion or without. It's true that people who really get into illusionism often also tend to appreciate simulation, but the opposite is not necessarily true.

Of course, then you'll get people that complain about such illusionism of different monster basis not working in 4E because the numbers are all built off of a clear formula, and other people complaining that it doesn't work in 3E because of templates. In both cases, one answer was the same as it was when the early D&D DM had players spending too much time flipping through monster listings instead of playing--change it up, using the math you have as a baseline.

OTOH, one of 4E's answers to this question was that if the mechanics reflect the flavor of the creature, it won't matter if you as a player know how it works or not. That is, if kobolds are shifty, and this works, it doesn't matter if you know that or not. They'll still be hard to pin down. Contrast that to something like 2E, where kobolds are not, in fact, all that capable, Tucker's Kobolds notwithstanding. It's all an illusion, but using sufficient numbers and environment for the DM to extrapolate from some fluff abilities that are nowhere specified mechanically in the creature. That's why they are "Tucker's Kobolds" and not "Tucker's usage of Kobolds exactly like they are spelled out to work."

Note also that it would theoretically be possible to combine the 3E and 4E approach here, as far as the simulation is concerned. (I'm less sanguine about how well it would handle.) That is, imagine if you will a big, organized list of 4E-type powers like "shifty", that any creature can theoretically have. And then you have a rather simple monster manual as the base, but with the injunction that you pick abilities that either match the flavor text--or the flavor as you've envisioned it. So mechanically working a lot like 4E, but organized and applied more in the 3E manner, on top of creatures that are more Basic/AD&D in presentation. That is, the orc listing has a base stat, ecology, motivations, etc. Then you can read into that whatever you want, and go pick out some abilities that fit it--or you can wing it off of the ability scores and description, ala Tucker's Kobolds.

This would tie back into my comments on illusionism because when as a player reacting to the monsters the DM plops down on the table, you don't really know if its all illusionism or mechanically backed or some mixture, other than knowing how the DM usually runs things.

Li Shenron said:

No, that's not what it means: Dumbing down - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The problem I am calling "dumbing down" is about every character focusing on attacking something and damage/destroy it.

I am not saying this is a problem of 4e... I've heard many times people saying that in 4e you can do a lot of other things in combat, such as pushing/pulling opponents around, tripping, slowing/constraining them etc.

But I still see a lot of people using "damage output" as the only measure of balance, to the point that even those combat alternative have to measured in how much damage are you giving up to use them.

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4E actually moved AWAY from simple damage output being the measure of combat effectiveness, nor is it the be all-end all of balance as it was in 1E, 2E and 3E. They actually codified and quantified the roles that were always present in the game so that different classes could do different things than just "I duz damage R0XX0RS!". Defending characters got abilities that actually helped them defend, Leaders got to still heal but got to do other things too and Controllers still got all their goodies but didn't also do all the damage any more.

The "how much damage can I do" has always been around. When dual-wielding first came out and Rangers could wield two one-handed weapons people inevitably went for two Long Swords and talked about any other choice not being very good. The internet just opened up these conversations to forums.

Now, if another game tells you that you are inferior in combat in terms of how % of the monsters' HP you can drop, maybe to your gaming preferences this can lead you to think you have nothing good to do, but to my gaming preferences this means I should activate my thinking helmet and find something more creative to do, so to me it has the opposite effect of "dumbing down" the game.

Of course then such "something more creative to do" could be already provided by the rules in explicit form for your non-fighter PC, could be more hidden within the general mechanics, or could even be non covered by the rules and require an adjudication between the player and DM.

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Again you're operating under a false assumption, especially concerning 4E which has a popular Pacifist Cleric that can't attack a bloodied enemy or else become stunned.

There's also the problem of adjudication. A good system gives you examples of how to adjudicate things. In 4E you can stick to your powers as written, or do whatever you want, but as a DM it's nice to have examples to compare to.

It's not fun for you, but it's always been fun for me and my group, because normally none of us had to sit on their thumbs. But even if we had to, in a game where a combat takes 10-15 minutes, it's not a big deal. There is always some time when a player doesn't know what to do in a RP/interaction scene, or an exploration scene, or even a shopping scene, and that is no problem unless it lasts too long.

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I've had it both ways, it's highly DM and game dependent as well as player dependent. If wannabe actor boy starts going on a tangent and the DM rolls with it, it can be fun, or it might only be fun for the two of them. If you have to invade a fortress you're going to be facing combat after combat for a while.

4e combats last so long that yes, if a 4e player had nothing to do in combat, he might prefer to quit the table.

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Again, this isn't a 4E issue, higher level fights in 3E took just as long or longer, heck b buffing time and a single save-or-die spell could suck up huge amounts of real world time. It's game, player and DM dependent. Combats in 4E are as long as the players make them. One issue with powers and a myriad of choices though is that the players actually have to pay attention. Unlike 1E if a player's not paying attention and just says "I attack with my sword" or "I shoot a Magic Missile" they get looked at much differently because there are presented powers and examples of many more things they could be doing rather than just that.

But you have to understand that not everybody wants to play D&D as an endless stream of combats or one huge combat. Once again, this is a matter of what you're looking for when playing D&D, I'm not saying that if you want combat only it's badwrongfun, I'm saying that to me that kind of game has bored me long ago, and I want my RPG to have a much wider scope, like in fact D&D always had.

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4E is no different from ANY other edition in that aspect. You can play whatever type of game you want with it because the fundamental system is much stronger than any of its predecessors, as it should be. The issue many of us are having with 5E is that they don't appear to be taking a step forward but regressing to a weaker underlying system.

Imaro said:

Dude, I never said combat is everything in D&D, I was using it as one example of how rules can and do affect gameplay.

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All of the examples you provided were combat-related, or at least character-death-related. I can't comment on examples that you didn't provide.

Herschel said:

It has nothing to do with fun though, he posted about "dumbing down the game". Simple or complex can be fun, but saying the broader spectrum of choices instead of narrowly defined archtypes and skills is "dumbed down" is, quite frankly, dumb.

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I was simply responding to this line:

If I want to play a rogue, why should I have to sit on my thumbs when we get in to a fight because I'm good at picking locks and finding traps? Why if I'm a Cleric should I just be a healbot instead of doing cool things myself? That's not fun.

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Just pointing out some people do find this fun.

Bedrockgames said:

Just pointing out some people do find this fun.

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Some people may, but while you can choose not to exercise options you do have, you can't choose to exercise options you don't have.

Fifth Element said:

All of the examples you provided were combat-related, or at least character-death-related. I can't comment on examples that you didn't provide.

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But I stated my general point... which I then provided (limited) evidence for. Regardless of whether the example I provided is centered around combat or not... I NEVER stated combat is all there is in D&D or even predicated that premise... that's you putting words in my mouth.

EDIT: And since it's necessary for me to provide a non-combat example in order for you not to assume that I think the entire gamse is centered around combat... let's take skill challenges (as presented in 4e core). The original rules for skill challenges did not allow for a player to choose to do nothing in the skill challenge. According to the rules, on his/her turn a player had to make a skill check towards the success or failure of the SC. This produces a different play experience than if a player has the option not to participate, or not to make a skill check. Now I know later this changed in 4e, but that's exactly the point... this change in the rules produced a different type of play than one where you are denied the choice of not acting.