D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[pemerton]

The bolded was one of the specific bits I found both aggravating and disappointing when first reading the 4e DMG, in a "What the hell are they thinking? This is terrible advice!" kind of way.

I didn't feel ripped off as such; but after the buildup had somewhat led me to expect (or at least hope for) one thing, to get something else was a considerable letdown.

On this, I stand by my view that the basic lines of development were clear from the first half of 2008. So that passage in the DMG didn't surprise me at all. It is a D&D-ish way of expressing the basic principle of cutting to the action and not fostering "setting tourism" as a focus of play.

What this meant, of course, was that I stopped right there; and didn't bother buying any of the second go-round of the core three books (DMG II, etc.). Thus, any tweaks or improvements or fine-tuning there - of which I gather there's a fair bit - is lost on me.

Well, improvement in the explanation of, and fine-tuning in the mechanics of, a resolution framework that is of no interest to you - namely, skill challenges - would still be of no interest to you.

Likewise advice on how to handle companions and cohorts in the context of a game that deliberately rejects the idea that the "build" of NPCs need not mirror that of PCs. And advice on how to use "inherent bonuses" in place of "enhancement bonuses" to handle the magic item component of the PC build maths.

So why would you bother with the DMG II?

I haven't bought any of the supplements for 5e D&D. Nor have I bought any of its core books.

 

[Hussar]

That, what you just said, is the underlying assumption supporting that power, and many other 4e rules widgets.

See that’s the problem right there.

There are about 9000 published powers for 4e. Most of them don’t have this underlying assumption. I’m the phb there are five or six powers outfits real hundred that are arguably like CaGI.

If you didn’t want those assumptions in your game, 4e has you covered.

 

[Hussar]

The bolded was one of the specific bits I found both aggravating and disappointing when first reading the 4e DMG, in a "What the hell are they thinking? This is terrible advice!" kind of way.

This little sidebar is such a perfect microcosm of the problems 4e faced. Because "skip the gate guards" is NOT what the DMG says. If you read the section, in context, what it's actually saying is, "It's okay, Mr. New DM Who isn't Really Sure, to move on from things that your players aren't enjoying. Do not feel compelled to play out every single thing just because it's there. This is the express permission being given to you, Mr. New DM, to not force things just because they happen to be in a module or in your notes."

Which, in context, makes this some of the best New DM advice in any DMG.

But, people, just like now, never actually READ the DMG. So, they see the whole "skip the gate guards" thing as an attack on playstyle, which it wasn't in any way, shape or form.

 

[Aldarc]

This little sidebar is such a perfect microcosm of the problems 4e faced. Because "skip the gate guards" is NOT what the DMG says. If you read the section, in context, what it's actually saying is, "It's okay, Mr. New DM Who isn't Really Sure, to move on from things that your players aren't enjoying. Do not feel compelled to play out every single thing just because it's there. This is the express permission being given to you, Mr. New DM, to not force things just because they happen to be in a module or in your notes."

Which, in context, makes this some of the best New DM advice in any DMG.

But, people, just like now, never actually READ the DMG. So, they see the whole "skip the gate guards" thing as an attack on playstyle, which it wasn't in any way, shape or form.

For some people it seems, however, that any advice that doesn't advocate for their preferred playstyle for every GM and table, regardless of idiomatic preferences, IS perceived as an attack on their playstyle.

 

[Red Castle]

I don't know if that comparison holds. We're talking about versions of D&D here, in theory they're being designed and marketed to the same audience. This is ordering fries and receiving a bagel, not going to the wrong restaurant. 4e was specifically positioned as a replacement for an existing thing. We're not comparing D&D to a non-D&D game.

I would say it's more like ordering fries expecting Standard Cut and getting Steak Cut instead. 4e was still DnD. Every edition makes change. 3e moved away from thaco and made major change to how multiclass works, but it was still very much DnD.

I fully understand that 4e made changes that a lot of players hated, or thought that they were too much, but at the end of the day, it was very much still DnD, just like any edition before it (or after). It has a lot more in common with prior edition than it has opposite.

PS I know you were expending on Justice metaphor so I don't think you believe 4e was not DnD.

 

[soviet]

It's not like 4e was equivocal about what it was doing and how it was changing. Anyone who bought 4e then felt disappointed not to get 3.6 or 2.1 deserved their fate.

 

[Voadam]

Thanks to that first image, from this day forward I will forever know there are three central alignments: Neutral, Unaligned, and APE NEUTRAL.

(Or Neutral Cockatrice, but ape neutral jumped out at me first before I even saw these were example creatures.... Plus I took an overnight flight last night and am sleep deprived, so this may be much funnier to me than anyone else, and if so, apologies in advance!)

The other fun part is the typo of liches in the LG region of the second one.

Holmes basic's five alignments Neutral and the two axes of Law/Chaos and Good/Evil:

View attachment 340866

View attachment 340870

compare to WFRP's five alignment system:

View attachment 340872

For 4e it is a lot more the spectrum of WFRP than the grid of Holmes Basic. Just turn Law into Lawful Good, and Chaos into Chaotic Evil.

 

[Imaro]

It's not like 4e was equivocal about what it was doing and how it was changing. Anyone who bought 4e then felt disappointed not to get 3.6 or 2.1 deserved their fate.

Ze game will remain ze same!!

 

[payn]

It's no one's "fault" that they do or don't enjoy things. There are plenty of RPGs that I don't (or wouldn't) enjoy, and don't play for that reason.

But I think that even if someone has a "3E mindset" it's not that hard to understand how 4e works, even if it's not their preference. And interpreting the game in a way that ignores its rules and obvious principles of play, so as to then criticise it on the basis of that (mis)interpretation, seems silly.

I far prefer bridge to poker as a card game; but I don't critique poker on the grounds that when we play poker we don't take and count the tricks properly.

Similar to @Justice and Rule, my response to this is - are you really incapable of understanding rules and principles for a RPG that you nevertheless would not enjoy.

I mean, I don't really enjoy Gygaxian dungeon-crawling that much; but I don't read the books and complain about the lack of rules for narration of consequence on action declarations. I can see how the wandering monster clock, and related ideas like making a wandering monster check if the PCs do something especially noisy, fills the role of establishing consequences even though it's not my preferred approach.

Was Bridge ever sold to you as poker though?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's not like 4e was equivocal about what it was doing and how it was changing. Anyone who bought 4e then felt disappointed not to get 3.6 or 2.1 deserved their fate.

First, I appreciate the honest (if somewhat unsparing) assessment.

With that in mind, I really think that this gets to the crux of the issue. We've seen many people on this thread note that they tried 4e, and bounced off of it for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it was because they didn't like the way that it played. Sometimes it was because it wasn't good for one or more people in their group. The point is- it wasn't just a loud contingent of people who were dead-set against 4e and complained about. There was also a number (that number is undetermined, of course) of people who tried the new edition, and it didn't stick.

Which brings us back to the OP, and the point of this thread. 4e was the fastest edition to be abandoned. As I've noted previously, it was already dead within Hasbro prior to the release of Essentials ... which means that it was dead within two years of its release. We don't know the exact trend lines, but I would suspect, based on that information, that the trend lines were not good; that a number of people that originally purchased 4e chose not to continue playing it. Obviously, while this is trivially true (there are some number of people for whom this is true), without knowing the actual numbers, we can't know how much of a factor this was.

But it comes back to what you are saying in this quote. This is the essential divide. A game can be incredibly well-designed for some people, but not for all people. You had a massive generation of players raised on the TSR model of D&D that were still around. You had the recent generation of players who had fully bought into the newer mechanics of 3e.

Telling these people that they just deserve their fate ... well, that's not likely to go over well with them. That's why 4e was rocket fuel to PF and OSR.

People often get caught up in a senseless debate. 4e wasn't a bad game; I know that I have repeatedly said that 4e was a game that had a strong P.O.V. from a design perspective, and it was a well-designed game! But (IMO) it wasn't a well-designed game in terms of being "The D&D game that would appeal to D&D fans in the broadest and most commercially successful way," which is a different design task. I think that the revelations that we've been seeing speak to an insularity of the design team, who made well-intentioned decisions regarding design that were nonetheless incorrect given their task; it wasn't their task to make what they thought was the best design- it was their task to make a game that would be popular and sell a lot of copies and support Hasbro's other initiatives.

I think it would be interesting to find out what drove this design process in more detail. For example, we all know that WoTC looked extensively at what players wanted when designing 3e, and we are all familiar with the playtests and consensus model used for 5e. Neither of which is likely to produce cutting-edge or innovative design, but it likely to lead to safe, boring, and commercially successful decisions.