The roots of 4e exposed?

Zeromaru X said:

In my table, I was the guy with the DDI account. And the only one who bought suplements, as well. The other people playing in the store I used to play at the time, they only had the first DMG, PHB and MM. They relied on me for any other book.

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FWIW, we had one guy with a DDI account- the DM. I, OTOH, was sort of my usual “Mr. Library” self...”sort of” being the key. I bought the core 3 books, but decided quickly I’d never run 4Ed. But I bought all of the books that presented options for PCs.

Nobody else bought a thing.

Charlaquin said:

It’s not that D&D no longer needed to be a core brand, it’s that Hasbro changed its policies regarding core brands and what is required of them. And I believe the information came from WotC.

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Ryan Dancey predicted what would happen to DnD back in 2012 and it looks like things have played out almost exactly as he thought.

It would have been very easy for Goldner et al to tell Wizards "you're done with D&D, put it on a shelf and we'll bring it back 10 years from now as a multi-media property managed from Rhode Island". There's no way that the D&D business circa 2006 could have supported the kind of staff and overhead that it was used to. Best case would have been a very small staff dedicated to just managing the brand and maybe handling some freelance pool doing minimal adventure content. So this was an existential issue (like "do we exist or not") for the part of Wizards that was connected to D&D. That's something between 50 and 75 people.

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My biggest objection to 4e was that I COULD NOT follow how to create a PC in the players handbook. I never figured out where and how some bonuses came from. I just trusted the chargen program.

We will do the PF2 playtest, yes. Will we switch long term? I sort of doubt it. I don’t want to have to completely rebuild my collection of DMing databases still yet again...

Charlaquin said:

It’s not that D&D no longer needed to be a core brand, it’s that Hasbro changed its policies regarding core brands and what is required of them. And I believe the information came from WotC.

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I'd love to read when and why this happened. If you happen to remember an article or link to a site where it's explained feel free to shoot it to me in a pm or in this thread.

Charlaquin said:

Because while 4e did have its fan base, it did not grow the brand as much as would have been expected given the coinciding rise of geekdom in the mainstream. So they went back to the drawing board in hopes of devising an edition that would be more approachable to the mainstream geek audience, as well as to win back the long-time DMs (who unfortunately are too often needed as a way to bring new players in). And it worked. Very well.

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Well I don't think anyone is disputing whether 4e had fans or not... but it does seems like you are stating the same thing posted earlier, mainly that it didn't garner enough fan support, a large enough customer base, etc for 4e to be considered successful enough to continue being the main rules that would be iterated on for future versions of D&D. I mean given some of the evidence we have, like the Orr Group quarterly report, that shows 4e falling not only behind 5e, but both Pathfinder, and 3.5 (along with a few non D&D games like Shadowrun and Star wars) I don't think it's all that far fetched to think either 4e didn't have a very large fanbase or it's fanbase was made up of people who didn't have a strong attachment to 4e per se.

Tony Vargas said:

4e failed to hit a revenue goal set by Hasbro that even the entire industry, today, would still be failing to meet.

OTOH, total lack of support for the last 6 years goes a fair way towards getting you to give up an edition.

And AEDU isn't so much the core/essence of 4e, as the consistency with which it was applied. It could have been AED or ADU or LMNOP, or , IDK, everyone getting feats like a 3.0 fighter and all you abilities coming from them...

...hey, that last is maybe just a bit like PF2, afterall.

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In other threads I've heard the whole industry is up to 45 million revenue.

With 15 million people playing D&D.

I've also heard a claim that the goal was 50 million. Between D&D and Pathfinder, we are pretty close to that goal.

And, no Pathfinder 2 is nothing like 4e. It does not want to drive its fans away.

Shasarak said:

I think that you can be a good friend and a bad DM at the same time.

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Certainly possible, but he wasn't a bad DM in the opinions of the people at the table at the time and regardless of how many times we lost characters; we enjoyed the game.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Well, more than once, if I’m honest. “Edgelord” character players are like roaches- if there’s one, there are more.

It’s not an issue designers are going to “lose sleep over”, but it is part of a peripheral concern about how robust a system is. How many playstyle variants it can support. The more flexible the system is in that regard, the more replayability it has. Part of WHY I play characters like that is because I’ve been playing D&D since 1977. I’ve played most of the archetypal characters, so playing something different- sometimes radically so- helps keep me interested. Furthermore, my doing so demonstrates broader possibilities to players who haven’t seen the outside of the box. It is not an exaggeration to say I’ve had other experienced gamers ask me about my character design processes.

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Yeah, actually I agree with you that a game SHOULD hopefully accommodate such play, letting you do things with your (hopefully) higher non-primary stats that result in an equally good but different character. And I certainly identify with the "I've played every possible sane AD&D character build, now I'm going to start on the downright weirdo crazy ones." I mean, I DID start playing a good while before the debut of 1e...

Now, with 4e at least, the game's answer, IMHO is "don't actually play the 12 STR fighter as a fighter." You would probably play it as something else, a bard, a rogue, a ranger, maybe something completely different even. Then you would skin your build to scan narratively as "Boris the 12 STR fighter." This CAN work really well, but it means putting in some extra effort up front and not being chronically hung up on "everything must be exactly described as some guy wrote it in the book" (a bizarre notion IMHO but an amazing number of posters here are about to jump on and tell me that this is absolutely rigidly how D&D MUST be run!).

Zeromaru X said:

In my table, I was the guy with the DDI account. And the only one who bought suplements, as well. The other people playing in the store I used to play at the time, they only had the first DMG, PHB and MM. They relied on me for any other book.

Anyways, PF2 seems intriging, but I'm also one of those who enjoys playing 4e over other editions/systems. I mean I tried playing 5e (and not only once; I genuinely tried to give 5e a chance), but it doesn't work for me.

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I didn't find 5e to be disgusting or unplayable or anything like that. It WORKS, within a certain set of parameters that includes doing more work as a DM than I really care for. It is also prone to a lot of DM foibles I suspect, though the one DM that ran it for us is not going to fall into too many bad habits. Anyway, it has some good design points too, just they would excite me if they were in the context of a refined 4e. I already played AD&D for 20 years, I just don't NEED a game which goes back there, even if it cleans up the mechanics a LOT.

Charlaquin said:

I’m saying there are a lot of 4e fans who don’t like 5e, and PF2 looks like it may appeal to 4e fans - it does to me, as a 4e fan.

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As I've said, I'm suspicious of appeals to popularity in any form. On top of that, consider what it meant to be a 4e fan. It meant you gave the new ed a fair chance, even when negative reviews cane out, even as the edition war heated up, and misinformation became common wisdom. They gave it enough if a chance to come to understand and appreciate a very different game.

4e fans may be disappointed in 5e in some ways, but, past behavior indicates they'll've given it every chance. And, while it's not the best or most ambitious D&D ever, it is studiedly, the most conventional and least offensive, and it is not at all hard to come to understand and appreciate. If you doubt that 4e fans are OK with 5e, I offer the lack of edition warring against 5e as evidence - the harshest critics if 5e are 3.5/PF fans.

If an alternative that was kinda maybe a bit like 4e were to appeal more, 13A was out before 5e, anyway. So I would not expect disgruntled former 4e fans to be anxious to move to PF2, for, like 13A or 5e, being maybe a bit like 4e.

And I will find it amusing if a not insignificant number of 4e fans adopt it in leu of other systems, because Paizo very much made their brand on the promise of being a haven from 4e.

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It would be deeply ironic.

Umbran said:

I think you paint it too black and white - that either what 4e fans likes was everything, or completely ignored

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I was being a little too terse in pursuit of pithy, there, I guess.

Fans of the classic game have, and had even when 4e was the current ed, significant support in the OSR. Fans of 3.5 have, and had even when 4e was the current ed, significant support in the form of 3pp product, most lavishly, Pathfinder.

4e fans do not now, and have not had since 2012, that luxury. It may be just an artifact of WotCs business missteps leaving the system in a legal mess, but it does mean that what 4e fans want: 4e, simply does not matter.
Because they're not going to get it.

they had to be recast in ways that fit the more classic framework that apparently appeals to the larger audience.

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This oft-repeated appeal to popularity is, as I have alluded to, not something I find useful. There's no telling what might appeal to a larger audience, because only that classic framework has ever had meaningful access to potential new players. TTRPGs that aren't D&D are virtually invisible to the mainstream, and the most deviant version of D&D was subjected to such a torrent of misinformation, that it's remarkable anyone sought it out, at all.

"Gatekeeping" came up in another thread, and, though it may be (outside the edition war) more coincidence than volition, ours is a gate-kept community.

AbdulAlhazred said:

... being chronically hung up on "everything must be exactly described as some guy wrote it in the book" (a bizarre notion IMHO but an amazing number of posters here are about to jump on and tell me that this is absolutely rigidly how D&D MUST be run!).

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You keep a hobbyist pursuit relatively isolated and basically unchanged for 25 years, folks're gonna get set in their ways. And the trickle of new folks joining it will learn those ways....