There are so many things about D&D that are terrible game design, that there's almost no limit to how much of it you could change before you started making it worse instead of better. But the game(npi)-changing, revolitionary 'RPG better than D&D' has been arround virtually since the 2nd (maybe 4th?) RPG was created later in the 70s, one after another, almost without pause, and has had 0 impact on the dominance of D&D.
I found my “better than” in HERO, but 3.X has held steady as my #2. I’m really digging Cypher right noe, but haven’t gotten to give it an in-play shakedown cruise.
But one of the major reasons for D&D’s market dominance is a simple thing: it was first to the market. Being first is the single biggest factor in predicting any product’s success- as I recall, @67% of successful products were first to market.
Continued success, though, means you can’t just rest on your laurels. You have to react- ideally proactively- to market forces. In the RPG market, the biggest manifestation of that is new editions.
4e was enough better than, and different from, D&D to be warred against by the old gaurd, as it was, making it more so would only have further marginalized it - as long as it had the D&D logo. Without the logo, it'd've just been the nth game to come out, be hands-down strictly superior to D&D in every way, maybe win an award or two, and never be heard from again.
I disagree. If ever there was a company in a position to launch a second big RPG title, it was WotC at that time.
The fact that it was labeled D&D was a roadblock to acceptance precisely because it was so different. That label meant it was automatically going to be compared to what was not only the
original RPG, but also the most popular game on the market...as a
replacement. That’s the New Coke trap to a T; a big part of why people like me said it didn’t feel right.
1) the near absence of iterative attacks. If your attack roll resulted in a miss, you were basically done for the round.
Doesn't that speed up play?
Nope.
Multiple attacks, whether from a single source (iterative attacks, a spell) or massed attackers ganging up boosts DPR or the odds that a side effect will trigger, thus dropping foes more quickly.
Heck, look at some of the more highly regarded 4Ed powers, especially for strikers. Many give an actual second (or more!) attack or let you replace one (presumably failed) roll with the results of a reroll. The conjuror/summoners & pet users can also get this benefit by having minions or powers increase the number of operant effects hitting enemies.
Those all increase statistical odds of success, and that translates into quicker combats.
2) too many short duration and/or small value modifiers. That meant a lot of tracking +1s & +2s from a variety of sources, of various durations. You were almost never attacking with the same attack or damage bonuses as the previous round, which meant doing math every turn.
"Did you remember the +2 I gave you?" Yeah, there was a lot of that. It wasn't any worse than 3e itterative attacks & myriad modifiers.
I beg to differ.
3.X boosters tended to be larger and longer lasting- several rounds at least, if not a whole combat, hours or days of campaign world. The fiddliest modifiers in 3.X were “next roll” (like True Strike) or AoE effects (like the auras of Paladin, Marshalls & Dragon Shamans).
The net effect in 3.X is that- usually- your modifiers changed between combats or game sessions, not between rounds. That’s a LOT less bookkeeping.
some of our less-experienced players struggled with choosing powers, and often were not settled on a course of action when their turn rolled around. I suspect those players would have done better with Essentials classes, but those were not available until after our campaign concluded.
Pregens are a good way to go with new players, and starting at 1st, where the issue is minimized, did not bring with it the problem of the characters being overly fragile. Compared to playing an essentials or other-ed caster, though, 4e classes were fairly streamlined with easy choices among just a few powers, and the choice not being as critical (most rounds you could just use an at will and be fine) vs many, more critical, decisions among spells.
Essentials classes theoretically should have helped returning players who had the expectation that starting with a fighter would be 'simple,' but returning players had been thoroughly turned off by then.
Nobody in our group was a noob, but we did have experience gaps of decades and some were much more casual than others. Had Essentials been part of the initial release, its streamlined class design would have been a HUGE boon to some of them.
However, my understanding of the origins of Essentials was the feedback WotC got after 4Ed’s release, sooooo that was basically impossible.
As an essentially toolboxy, genre-neutral type system, that form of 4Ed might have been a second hit for WotC while 3.X trundled along to its natural conclusion, whatever that may ultimately be.
I could even imagine that version of the system still being a market presence today.
I couldn't. The two-prong approach may have worked for the original game, in the fad years, but I doubt even the come-back zietgiest of today could have overcome the confusion of having two or more versions of the game. To stage a come-back, a brand needs more unity of identity than that.
You’re still looking at it as D&D. I’m looking at it as WotC’s HERO or GURPS.
They
tried that to a certain extent with 3.X, with
Modern and
Future, but 3.X isn’t as suited to being toolboxy as the bones of 4Ed.
