A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[TheAuldGrump]

And pretty much right out of the gate. (I was there.)

No you weren't! You didn't show up until page post six!

Welcome once again to the Silly Arguments Department, have a mint, they're free.

The Auld Grump, in a Pythonian mood at the moment.

 

[Mircoles]

4E isn't as popular as it could have been because it doesn't smell like D&D. I'm not sure if that's really the fault of the lack of setting, though the absence of a touchstone certainly could contribute to its sterility.

If your going to say something lke that then you should also mention that 3.x smells even less like D&D than 4e.

I never felt like I was playing D&D when I played 3.x.

With 4e though, the feeling is there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But what I want to know is why, of all the people who were happy with and played 3.5, some of them went to 4e and some didn't. Clearly, some of them made the decision based on the design direction. Some, however (even most, I might assert), decided based on some other factor: perceived PR mishaps, canceled features, etc. These things bothered some people, and they didn't bother others. So what was the factor that drew the line? What was it about some people who were okay with these things, and didn't let them affect their choice in game, and what was it about the others who did?

There is no one factor...but from what I've read (and my personal perspective), PR gaffes, design decisions and abandoning the OGL were the Big 3. Things like disappearing features merely put the signet ring into the wax seal.

And the thing is, EVERYONE let these factors help decide their decisions. They just weighted them differently; they just liked or disliked different things.

Our choices in RPGs are like what we choose to eat: I love beef, pork, chicken, alligator, turtle, turkey, quail, ostrich, buffalo, mutton, venison, and seafood of all kinds; I have friends who are vegetarians. I know some Columbians who swear by Big-Ass Ants, and Africans who love termites. Its all good.

No one tastes appeal to everyone...nor should it.

 

[Dannager]

If your going to say something lke that then you should also mention that 3.x smells even less like D&D than 4e.

I never felt like I was playing D&D when I played 3.x.

With 4e though, the feeling is there.

And the conclusion we can walk away from this with is that there is no such thing as that fresh D&D smell. D&D is any number of things to any number of people, and the idea of proclaiming that D&D X isn't enough like real D&D is silly on its face.

Of course, the idea of holding up any game against any other game as a way of measuring its worth is a silly one to begin with. Whatever happened to judging things on their own merits?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Welcome once again to the Silly Arguments Department, have a mint, they're free.

Oh, no they're not!

 

[pemerton]

4E doesn't have an ongoing, supported setting.

<snip>

it also has a kind of default vibe or atmosphere, a "meta-setting" that includes the new planar structure and the mythology that's been presented in the "theme" books (e.g. Underdark, Plane Above, etc). But it doesn't have a setting that is supported in an ongoing way, that is being explored and developed through supplements.

In this respect 4e resembles a game like The Dying Earth. I've never read the Vance stories, but feel that I could run a game of Dying Earth from the rulebook. It gives me the "vibe" and "meta-setting", plus tips on how to set up situations/scenarios that will exploit that vibe to produce a fun session.

My feeling is that 4e was written with the intention to be GMed in this sort of way. I say this because (i) it fits with the game's emphasis on the encounter - combat or non-combat as the basic unit of play; (ii) it fits with the obvious effort to create that default atmosphere, with the gods, race backgrounds and so on in the PHB and the little sidebars in the Power books; (iii) when you look at the original MM (with most of the campaign info located in skill check results), plus think about how skill challenges should play out (with the GM having to make calls about NPC responses, and other elements of the gameworld, on the fly in response to unpredictable player actions), and even look at the whole emphasis on "situations" rather than "world exploration" as the focus of play, the game seems intended to support "just in time" creation of world details, using "points of light" and the default atmosphere as a framework for doing this in; (iv) it fits with the absence of a developed setting.

Unfortunately, though, the rulebooks don't do much to support GMing this sort of game. A contrast is provided by The Dying Earth rulebook, which does offer tools to help the GM with this sort of situation-based preparation and play.

There is also the ability of a campaign world to be a source of ideas for a new DM or player. Good art, good stories, and good descriptions can all be catalysts for creating a character or an adventure, or even be the core of an entirely new world.

For 4e, this is really provided by Worlds and Monsters. Good art, interesting stories, and (most importantly for a GM) good discussions of the way in which those stories have been designed to help make an interesting game.Big chunks of this book should have been incorporated into the 4e DMG, in place of (what are in my view) unnecessary or overlong parts of it like the tedious discussion of giving adventure locations personality and the random dungeon generation. If they had been, that would have gone some way - though not all the way - to helping GMs run games in the sort of fashion that the rulebooks seem to intend.

I tend to read the complete AP's over and over again in preparation for running them and the Paizo crew really does give you a very good feel of whatever part of the world the AP's are taking place in. There's a lot of good background stuff there that yes, some of which the PC's may never know or find out about. But a good DM will make the material his own and find a way to disseminate that info so that it's relevant to your players. Not all of your players will retain this stuff, but for the ones that do? You have something with which to feed their curiosity and interest in the world.

For better or worse, this is the type of play that 4e does not seem to have been designed to support (although later books like The Plane Above, MM3 and Monster Vault are heading in a somewhat different direction).

I'm not saying its not a factor at all- those two clearly feel it was- but for most non-adopters, it was issues of marketing and mechanical/fluff changes they didn't like that kept them away from day one...IOW, LONG before lack of setting support could even be considered to be a factor.

I tend to agree with you and with Mercurius, because for the reasons I've given I think that the lack of a setting isn't a coincidence relative to the mechanical and flavour changes, but rather fits with them as part of a coherent (but, as it turns out, perhaps not so popular) overall design.

When 4e game out, I posted on these forums that WotC apparently agreed with Ron Edwards that a narrativist-oriented RPG focusing on situation and character-driven play would be more popular than a simulationist RPG focused on the players exploring the world and/or stories that the GM creates for them. Such a belief seems the only way to explain the presence, in 4e, of all the features I've mentioned above.

At the time I tended to assume that WotC weren't just speculating but actually knew- unlike Ron Edwards, for example, they have marketers and market researchers on their payroll. But it seems they may have got it wrong.

For someone like me, who wanted a game like the one they produced, it's turned out to be a lucky error. The tone of Essentials, though, plus the release of Nentir Vale, suggests that WotC might be pulling back, and trying to turn 4e into a more traditional RPG.

 

[innerdude]

As for having it's own setting... Nentir Vale is a nice small area that can be dropped into just about anywhere .....

.... You have 1 book for each major region, sometimes 2 or more packed in a book. You have the 3 planes books cover the elemental chaos, the astral sea, and the feywild/shadow dark ... in just enough detail to get you thinking your own stuff up. You've got the underdark covered with a book.

I don't want a "set of planes."

I don't want a scattered smattering of "major regions."

I don't want an underdark "concept."

I want a world for my RPGs.

And the baseline "setting," such as it is for 4e, comes nowhere close to creating the needed level of vision, consistency, and let's face it, passion. People create settings because they're passionate about creating something that provides great action, storytelling, and emotional resonance.

And I don't think WotC really grasped that concept with the 4e setting.

 

[Dannager]

For better or worse, this is the type of play that 4e does not seem to have been designed to support (although later books like The Plane Above, MM3 and Monster Vault are heading in a somewhat different direction).

Whether it was designed to work well with Pathfinder-style APs or not, in my experience it seems to run them just fine.

 

[pemerton]

There is an active thread on these very forums where members of the "upset portion of their customer base" have discussed, in entirely serious tones, the possibility of pursuing a lawsuit against WotC for producing and supporting 4e in the way they have.

Link? You've got me curious - in a watching-the-train-wreck kind of way!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While there IS a thread entitled something like "Do you think WotC be sued", the premise was largely disagreed with, and the bulk of the thread is discussing other lawsuits...IOW, its pretty much off-topic and out of control.

Link? You've got me curious - in a watching-the-train-wreck kind of way!

See the link in the above quoted post.