Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

The Fighter-Cricket · Feb 12, 2017

I like most of the analysis that is discussed here. Pretty spot on.

Just to add my perspective: 4E "feels" for me like a healthy breed of classical rpg and a board game. It has a rpg's dynamic and storytelling and the structure and clarity of a well designed board game. This is exactly what I want from an tabletop rpg (at least most of the time). I would also heartily agree to Manbearcat's two points. The things that 4E encourages you to do feel important. Your PC is not unlike any other inhabitant of the world. He/she is destined to leave a mark on the world. I like that. And as a last point: Through the game's mechanics (synergies in powers etc.) many things the PCs do feel like a team effort. That's very important to me (as player and as DM).

Myrhdraak · Feb 12, 2017

Igwilly said:
Not trying to start a flame war here, but at some time ago, I figured out a big difference between D&D 4e and “classic” D&D:
You know when people told about how 4e was an MMORPG? Well, 4e is, by no means, a video-game. However, if you start to compare electronic RPG genres with D&D editions, you see that 4e has a significant familiarity with another electronic RPG genre: Tactical RPG.
This doesn’t mean that 4e is a video-game, but rather that D&D 4e is to classic D&D as Final Fantasy Tactics subseries are to the main series.
Due to tactical combat nature, the very adventuring structure changed. Encounters were no more numerous and quick, but fewer and more important. Terrain, area effects, distances, all of that matter much more here. Strategy was no longer the king: tactics was sovereign with it – strategy and tactics are different things. That’s a fundamental change in how encounters are made.
I already did a research about the Tactical RPG genre: once you realize the difference between them and traditional Western/Eastern RPGs, you will see that it’s more or less the same difference between D&D 4e and classic D&D.
This obviously has nothing to do with fluff, story or roleplay.
4e, despite the problems I stacked when I was playing, remains one of my favorite RPG systems; the nature of combat is still very appealing to me.

I think that one of my interesting conclusions from trying to remodel some of the fundamentals of 4th Edition was that 4th Edition is not really built to be able to handel small and short/fast encounters. The game rules (as written) do not really support it in a good way.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...g-the-Combat-Parameters-of-4th-Edition/page10

4th Edition is really all about running longer tactical encounters - that is what it was optimized for. I would guess it was the design objective of the whole realease. What I find intresting is that with some small changes it could have been allowed to play in both ways, but as that was not the objective, they did not implement it that way.

Parmandur · Feb 12, 2017

Myrhdraak said:
I think that one of my interesting conclusions from trying to remodel some of the fundamentals of 4th Edition was that 4th Edition is not really built to be able to handel small and short/fast encounters. The game rules (as written) do not really support it in a good way.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...g-the-Combat-Parameters-of-4th-Edition/page10

4th Edition is really all about running longer tactical encounters - that is what it was optimized for. I would guess it was the design objective of the whole realease. What I find intresting is that with some small changes it could have been allowed to play in both ways, but as that was not the objective, they did not implement it that way.

Wherein they made their business error, as not everyone wants long or involved combat; onetruewayism doesn't pay off, particularly if a minority play style is randomly chosen as that way...

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The Fighter-Cricket · Feb 12, 2017

Parmandur said:
Wherein they made their business error, as not everyone wants long or involved combat; onetruewayism doesn't pay off, particularly if a minority play style is randomly chosen as that way...

Well, they produced a game edition where the combats are tactically engaging and can take too long for certain people. I wouldn't call that "onetrueway-ism". I can't see anyone who is saying "Why can't I play grid based and tactical combat in Vampire? Clearly White Wolf suffers from onetrueway-ism."

There are different games for different audiences. I am quite happy that the D&D scene is so divided that D&D can't really be seen as a "game for all tastes" anymore. It doesn't have to be imo. There are so many great games for everyone: story driven handwavy things, games for the grid crowd, boardgamey rpgs, games building up on a vast lore background, just plain silly ones, and even some where you die of blood poisoning because you have been stabbed by a rusty blade and you ran out of dried fruit to eat (I'm looking at you "Torchbearer"). There is no WotC monopoly anymore that forces a gamer to play the newest edition of D&D or any edition.

Parmandur · Feb 12, 2017

The Fighter-Cricket said:
Well, they produced a game edition where the combats are tactically engaging and can take too long for certain people. I wouldn't call that "onetrueway-ism". I can't see anyone who is saying "Why can't I play grid based and tactical combat in Vampire? Clearly White Wolf suffers from onetrueway-ism."

There are different games for different audiences. I am quite happy that the D&D scene is so divided that D&D can't really be seen as a "game for all tastes" anymore. It doesn't have to be imo. There are so many great games for everyone: story driven handwavy things, games for the grid crowd, boardgamey rpgs, games building up on a vast lore background, just plain silly ones, and even some where you die of blood poisoning because you have been stabbed by a rusty blade and you ran out of dried fruit to eat (I'm looking at you "Torchbearer"). There is no WotC monopoly anymore that forces a gamer to play the newest edition of D&D or any edition.

This is true, vive le difference and all that; buy also fortunately for me, WotC pit out an edition that does everything I ever wanted an RPG to do and is planning to support it for the foreseeable future.

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Parmandur · Feb 12, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
Oh, yeah, I came up against that constantly - try to have a decent Bond-villain type underground base, for instance. I used a hex map a few times in 4e games. Once when the party faced a Morkoth in it's lair, a couple of times in a short Far-Realm themed epic game. In both cases, they lent an air of the area being alien and confusing.

I've heard a few rave reviews of 5e that call it the best thing since 2e or otherwise make it clear that 2e is their vision of D&D, and 5e delivers on that vision. I've never heard /anyone/ comment that 5e compares to 3e or 4e that way, and rarely hear the OSR types waxing quite so rhapsodic, either. In a way, it's logical timing, the OSR thing has been going a while (starting with Hackmaster and Munchkin, in a light-hearted way, really), so the next cohort of D&Ders needed to be appealed to, right?

But, there are folks who reject every new edition, and even hate it, and stick with the last one. As we see in this sub-forum, there are folks striking with 4e and giving 5e a pass. They're just talking about it here, not edition-warring against 5e in forums devoted exclusively to it.

Interesting. Storyteller games, I found, were very readable, you could sit down and read one cover-to-cover almost like you'd read a novel, sometimes. It was futile to try to look up something you needed in play, though. So either memorize it or wing it.

The players I know who haven't adopted 5e have either stuck with PF or moved to 13th Age. I see the appeal in each, but 5e mostly matches them - and it's D&D. (Those still paying 4e, like myself, are /also/ playing 5e.)

For instance, 5e is tuned to resolve combat quickly: characters hit more often, do more damage, spells have more dramatic effects, monsters go down faster (so do PCs when the odds are against them). But that kind of tuning is the kind of thing a DM can easily work around. You don't /have/ to put a 5e party through 6-8 trivial fights a day, you can challenge them with larger more complex ones, and just make appropriate rulings & tweaks when the system creaks under the load. You've always been able to do that kind of thing, though. Under the RAW-uber-alles zietgiest of 3.5 you might more player push-back if you got creative on the fly; similarly, you could run quick/trivial fights in 4e, but your players might be disappointed and keep looking for the 'real challenge.' Expectations are a very important factor, and what you have to work with has a lot to do with that. 3.x and 4e lent themselves to quite-customized 'builds' so players could form a lot of expectations about how their characters might perform and develop in play. In the classic game, you more likely had to sit back and see what the DM tossed your way. The items (or as an MU, spells), tricks, traps, monsters, curses, and whatnot that the DM placed would shape your character far more than the decisions you made at chargen and (if any) level-up.

Among the folks I play with, I am old at 31; 2nd edition is not a know factor for the whipper snappers playing 5E: cadre generational determinism really doesn't come into play. As a 3.x gen player, 5E took 3.x, and fixed all of the problems it had for me: it's like they hacked my brain and created the ideal tweak of 3.x to fit my play style.

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AbdulAlhazred · Feb 12, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
Under the RAW-uber-alles zietgiest of 3.5 you might more player push-back if you got creative on the fly; similarly, you could run quick/trivial fights in 4e, but your players might be disappointed and keep looking for the 'real challenge.' Expectations are a very important factor, and what you have to work with has a lot to do with that.

I'd like to just point out that 4e's DMG1 illustrates the technique of soft and hard encounters quite well with Kobold Hall. I think its only flaws were the 2 hardest encounters came at the end one after the other, and it was pretty easy to just skip the last encounter, though it was certainly likely that doing so could lead to interesting consequences if DM so chose. It was a pretty limited 'adventure', but the encounter difficulties did vary greatly from trivial to nearly unkillable.

3.x and 4e lent themselves to quite-customized 'builds' so players could form a lot of expectations about how their characters might perform and develop in play. In the classic game, you more likely had to sit back and see what the DM tossed your way. The items (or as an MU, spells), tricks, traps, monsters, curses, and whatnot that the DM placed would shape your character far more than the decisions you made at chargen and (if any) level-up.

True.

Jhaelen · Feb 13, 2017

Parmandur said:
Wherein they made their business error, as not everyone wants long or involved combat; onetruewayism doesn't pay off, particularly if a minority play style is randomly chosen as that way...

I'm quite sure nothing about 4e's design was the result of 'randomness'.
4e was mainly designed to address the (perceived?) shortcomings of 3e, an edition that had been generally well received and brought many players back to D&D (myself included) after they'd grown disenchanted with it when 2e didn't represent enough of an evolution to allow it to compete with more modern RPG systems.
Combat in 3e was just as tactical and involved as in 4e, but while 3e combat was rather static, 4e strived to make it more dynamic. The real time it took to finish a combat didn't change much, but the in-game time changed: in 3e even high-level combat was typically over after 3-4 rounds, in 4e it could easily take twice as many rounds (or more).

I consider 5e a continuation of 2e. It's a 'back-to-the-roots' edition for players who didn't enjoy 4e _or_ 3e. It was also important that it felt like a streamlined and less clunky game to players who had grown tired of Pathfinder (which isn't really all that different from 3e and didn't manage to get rid of any of its problems). But for me 5e didn't solve anything. It made me turn away again from D&D, looking for 'better' RPG systems.

But I've also been spoiled by the tactical combats 4e offered. Combat in most other systems really feels dull compared to it. Fortunately, this isn't a problem if your games don't focus on combats, though.

Caliburn101 · Feb 13, 2017

4th Edition was a massive departure from the continuum of certain core elements of the D&D from 1st Edition onwards, and 5th has stepped back into that line of progression once again.

I would agree that a lot of the book keeping was discarded in 4th, but whilst this could have saved time at the table (the best reason to drop it I would argue), it introduced other elements which were time sinks in and of themselves, so this particular potential benefit was not realised when looking at it holistically.

4th played more like a pen and paper MMO and reminded me of the formulaic nature of tabletop wargames. I certainly saw far, far more 4th Edition games running at clubs using figures and maps than any other edition. In fact, there was a feeling generally that running it using TotM was a stretch to keep track of in one's head when running 4th.

I know a lot of people liked 4th Edition for various factors, but I found it clunky and time consuming in a way which didn't add to the collective 'suspension of disbelief' required of TotM. This I think was both it's strength and weakness simultaneously.

Let's be even handed though; on a core-crunch basis, 4th Edition was largely D&D only in name. Whilst fluff-wise one could successfully argue it was D&D, those feeling like it 'didn't feel like D&D' were correct when considering that most people regard both fluff and crunch as parts of the whole. If you fundamentally change the way a mechanic works but call it the same thing - is it still the same?

Not really...

It certainly didn't feel like D&D to me, nor indeed for anyone I know - but for what it set out to do, it catered for a certain style of play fairly well, and as a game in it's own right gave players and GMs the opportunity to run a new style of fantasy rpg.

Scrivener of Doom · Feb 13, 2017

Myrhdraak said:
I think that one of my interesting conclusions from trying to remodel some of the fundamentals of 4th Edition was that 4th Edition is not really built to be able to handel small and short/fast encounters. The game rules (as written) do not really support it in a good way. (snip)

And as I pointed out in another thread, that's patently false.

I can make an interesting, tactically-rich short encounter using only minions. If I want to make it difficult, I use minion artillery. If I want to make it last a bit longer, I use over-level minion soldiers. But, basically, I can mix and match the level and role of minions to create short 4E encounters that run as quickly as any encounter in a Four Yorkshiremen edition but are still interesting.

Caliburn101 said:
4th Edition was a massive departure from the continuum of certain core elements of the D&D from 1st Edition onwards, and 5th has stepped back into that line of progression once again. (snip)

It wasn't.

It was a natural development of some of the earlier key conceits of D&D's design. But, yes, 5E is a throwback.

(snip) 4th played more like a pen and paper MMO and reminded me of the formulaic nature of tabletop wargames. I certainly saw far, far more 4th Edition games running at clubs using figures and maps than any other edition. In fact, there was a feeling generally that running it using TotM was a stretch to keep track of in one's head when running 4th. (snip)

I imagine if you had played in the Four Yorkshiremen days you would have also seen a lot of minis and maps. D&D started with wargamers. And while ToTM was common in the 80s, a lot of that had to do with the lack of relatively cheap resources to run a game: Running with a lot of minis involved a lot of costs in both money and time.

(snip) I know a lot of people liked 4th Edition for various factors, but I found it clunky and time consuming in a way which didn't add to the collective 'suspension of disbelief' required of TotM. This I think was both its strength and weakness simultaneously. (snip)

Similarly, if you had played AD&D, you would have seen the difficulty involved in running ToTM with lots of players - de rigeur in those days - and then having to adjudicate very specific measurements with respect to spell effects. Remember the blowback from a fireball or the ricochet of a lightning bolt? ToTM was driven more by the cost of resources than by the edition itself making ToTM a workable option.

(snip) Let's be even handed though; on a core-crunch basis, 4th Edition was largely D&D only in name. (snip)

Patently false.

What damage did a longsword do in Holmes? d8.
What damage did a longsword do in B/X? d8.
What damage did a longsword do in 1E? d8.
What damage did a longsword do in 2E? d8.
What damage did a longsword do in 3.xE? d8.
What damage did a longsword do in 4E? d8.

4E has plenty of things in common with earlier editions of D&D even where crunch is concerned. Again, it's a logical development that built on directions that 3.5E took just at 3.xE built on 2E and 2E built on 1E etc....

(snip) It certainly didn't feel like D&D to me, nor indeed for anyone I know - but for what it set out to do, it catered for a certain style of play fairly well, and as a game in it's own right gave players and GMs the opportunity to run a new style of fantasy rpg.

This is the nub of the issue.

4E does not feel like D&D to some people. That makes sense. It's an emotional, gut-level response and it's personal. I can accept that. And it certainly makes more sense than any of those vain attempts to try and frame a dislike of 4E for being a PnP MMO (which it isn't) or boardgame (which it isn't) or being devoid of roleplaying (which it isn't).

Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

The Fighter-Cricket

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Myrhdraak

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Parmandur

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The Fighter-Cricket

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Parmandur

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Parmandur

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AbdulAlhazred

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Jhaelen

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Caliburn101

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