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

[Hussar]

Except I did read it; and what I took away from reading that piece was, when boiled down, "skip the small stuff".

There's a difference between telling a DM it's OK to skip the small stuff and actively encouraging same; and I took the 4e DMG to be very much doing the latter.

Well, at least you admit that you are taking an uncharitable interpretation and ignoring the several pages of advice that precede the "skip the gate guards" thing. That's a pleasant change. I mean, pages of advice on making varied encounters, using interesting terrain, adding an interesting story and paying attention to pacing and other issues, but, all that's secondary to three words buried at the end of the section.

 

[pemerton]

In no way have I said it lays with the designers or publishers. But as I said earlier, "lays entirely with the group" tends to imply an ability to deal with it that I think shows little understanding of human nature and dynamics.

Well if the responsibility is not with the designer, nor the publisher, nor the group, then you're saying that no one is responsible - that it's like a force of nature!

This might describe some elements of human social life, but I don't find it persuasive for voluntary leisure activities.

 

[soviet]

Emphasis mine... Of course they do as long as we aren't discussing CaGi... right?

Great point. 'People are entirely rational when fighting to the death, but cannot control their reaction to boardgame rule changes' is quite the take.

 

[Imaro]

Are you mistaking me for one of the people who's obsessed about the fact that a lot of things in 4e are narrative conceits? If so you haven't been paying attention.

Not at all... just making an observation on those who justify the power with the explanation that we as humans aren't completely rational, logical beings... then ignore that wisdom when convenient.

 

[pemerton]

You don't want "DM empowerment" when you're playing pick up games with strangers.

I don't want "DM empowerment" when I'm playing long-running games with my friends. They're perfectly capable of contributing to play, and helping establish the shared fiction, without me telling them, in some unilateral fashion, what they can or should imagine.

Which, IMO, goes a ways to explaining why 5e touted the whole "DM empowerment" thing. It was directly addressing existing groups with established players.

I think "DM empowerment" is explained by something else. It turns out that most GMs - or at least most D&D GMs, but given the numbers in the hobby that probably is most GMs - aren't all that interested in the sort of player-driven RPGing that something like 4e is oriented towards. Maybe many players aren't either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well if the responsibility is not with the designer, nor the publisher, nor the group, then you're saying that no one is responsible - that it's like a force of nature!

I'm saying no one person is responsible, yes. That's not uncommon with problems involving breakdowns of expectations.

This might describe some elements of human social life, but I don't find it persuasive for voluntary leisure activities.

Then we differ. I've seen it enough times over the years I'm pretty comfortable with doing so. Some of the responses remind me of people who seem shocked and put off that there are a lot of communications breakdowns among gaming groups; they seem to have lived in very different world than I have.

 

[pemerton]

Not at all... just making an observation on those who justify the power with the explanation that we as humans aren't completely rational, logical beings... then ignore that wisdom when convenient.

Huh? No one is particularly surprised that group's might break up. What is surprising is the argument that this is 4e's fault! As opposed to the fault of the people who can't resolve these relatively small stakes social conflicts.

 

[pemerton]

I'm saying no one person is responsible, yes.

Neither I nor @hawkeyefan have suggested that one single person must be responsible. The responsibility might be collective, or distributed in some fashion. Hence why we have used imputed responsibility to the group.

Not the game!

 

[Hussar]

I will add that 4e worked very well for D&D Encounters and Living Forgotten Realms. Man, I miss LFR.

Oh, yeah. For playing with strangers and as a pick up game, 4e would be the go to edition. So few issues with interpretations, nearly zero balance issues (especially compared to previous editions), everyone plays using more or less the same framework for their characters, meaning that it's really easy to teach. As an onramp for D&D, 4e is a really good one.

It's just a terrible edition for established groups who didn't play using the assumptions of organized play. I've often thought that the fact that I played online, using Maptools at the time, meant that moving to 4e was a breeze. Maptools had a 4e ruleset already baked in - all you had to do was add in the specifics of your powers. Because everything was standardized, playing 4e on VTT was fantastic.

But, again, that's so much down to my experience. I couldn't imagine trying to play 4e face to face with only pencil and paper and no battlemap. Yikes. How in the world would you track the ten thousand little fiddly bits? We actually made a sort of sub-game to see how many effects we could stack on a single target at the same time. I think we hit twelve or thirteen at one point. On VTT? No problem. In person? No thanks. This is one area where 5e is greatly improved over 4e.

On a side note though, I keep seeing people claim that 4e would be a great video game. Umm, first off, there's 5e right there which has one of the most popular video games for D&D ever, so, it's not like 4e is alone in being translated to video game form. But, the other thing is, I have no idea how you would actually do 4e mechanics in video game form. There are so many interrupts and out right do-overs in 4e. Unless it was turn based, there's just no way to translate 4e into a video game. 3e works so much better as a video game, as does 5e simply because you don't have so many mechanics which allow players to chain interrupts together.

 

[Hussar]

I don't want "DM empowerment" when I'm playing long-running games with my friends. They're perfectly capable of contributing to play, and helping establish the shared fiction, without me telling them, in some unilateral fashion, what they can or should imagine.

I think "DM empowerment" is explained by something else. It turns out that most GMs - or at least most D&D GMs, but given the numbers in the hobby that probably is most GMs - aren't all that interested in the sort of player-driven RPGing that something like 4e is oriented towards. Maybe many players aren't either.

Yes, but, you admit right after your first part that most DM's aren't interested in shared authority. And, I would take it a step further in that so many players aren't either. Hand players any sort of authority over the game, and they stare at you with bafflement. There are many players out there that expect the DM to bring the entertainment. They're there to play through what the DM brings to the table and have zero interest in bringing anything other than the occasional quip and dice rolling to the table.

There's a very good reason why player-driven RPG's aren't very popular. Players expect/have been trained/have no interest in running games.