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

[Thomas Shey]

It certainly is in every part of life except apparently RPGs! Ask a lawyer, cop, judge, boss, anything. Without volition there can be no responsibility. Or to put it the other way around, "only when you have the power to act do you become responsible."

Lawyers views aren't the only ones. If someone runs over a nail in the dark, they'll absolutely say the flat is the fault of the nail. Fault can mean "cause" too, you know.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I look at 4e as a system that handles things like Wire Fu and Castlevania, or Indiana Jones type action really well. It should be a really excellent basis for supers too.

A friend tried to hack it into a supers game at one point. Far as I can tell, ran into a "too many moving parts" problem.

 

[Hussar]

Just to be the tiniest bit picky here: Worlds and Monsters was a soft-cover (I just dug my copy out to check); I believe the other one - Races and Classes - was also a soft-cover.

I stand corrected.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And these forums would have ended shortly thereafter, as you'd be the only poster left standing.

Not at all. There are plenty of folks who enjoyed 4e. There are even more who didn’t enjoy it, but don’t have a vendetta against it.

 

[Campbell]

There is no fault involved in people deciding they would rather play some other game or even participate in some other activity (like say intramural sports, board gaming groups or trivia nights). At the end of the day, we're talking about a group of people playing a game together, not a marriage. There is no fault to be assessed.

At heart this implies that seeking your bliss, trying new things. is ultimately an act of betrayal. That's beyond silly. I have left many gaming groups over the years because I was not getting the play experience I was looking for. Sometimes because I wanted to play different games. Sometimes because there was a core difference in what we wanted to get out of a particular game. This was a good thing because I'm in groups that jive with my preferences better and I don't have to deal with conflict at the table. It's also better for the groups I left behind because they get to enjoy a game that fits their preferences better.

 

[Hussar]

In the interests of brokering peace among folks, I would hasten to point out that this is stirring the ashes of a long dead issue. Let's be fair here, a lot of our defense of 4e is sour grapes. We definitely lost this argument. People didn't like 4e, made their opinion known loud and clear, and we've moved on to 5e (most of us anyway). It never hurts to take a deep breath and just sort of let it go. OTOH, it is rather cathartic to bitch about something that has so little actual importance. Nothing pisses people off more than stuff that just does not matter in the slightest.

 

[pemerton]

My statement was that a given game system can, indeed, be the proximate cause for a gaming group to break up under the right circumstances.

Think of 4e as the catalyst then... is that better?

If you don't accept any blame can come from beyond the participants, then we don't have anything further to say to each other. And no, the fact a game has no volition is not in the least relevant as far as I'm concerned. "Fault" is not dependent on volition.

So we move from "cause" or "catalyst" to fault! How can it be the fault of a game that people react to it in some irrational way?

I mean, we must be positing a situation where a group is cheerfully playing <whatever RPG>, and then someone in the group says "Hey, let's play 4e D&D", and then the group busts up? What, to never have any of them play RPGs again? Or some go off and play 4e while others get left behind? In this scenario, who has done anything wrong? It's not as if the 4e-up-takers are under any moral obligation to keep playing their second-best game with the rest of the (former) group.

I remember being in kindergarten and fighting with a friend of mine who would get to be the blue team for a game of Trouble. Neither of us would give in. The teacher came and took the game away from us.

It wasn’t Trouble’s fault.

<snip>

Seriously, think about what you guys are saying. Blaming a game for peoples’ behavior?

Those games need to be more careful. I mean, seriously, it even calls itself Trouble!

 

[pemerton]

Were these actual plays before release?? I don't remember those...

Also which 2 hardback are you speaking of... were these previews of the mechanics? Again... I don't remember these

Did these blog posts and other sources get the core books early?

I've already posted, in this thread, links to conversations taking place on these boards in 2007 and the first half of 2008 where it was obvious that 4e D&D was going to be a player-goal-focused, non-"simulationist" RPG. The announcements of the new mechanics and the new procedures of play absolutely screamed this.

I don't see how anyone who was following along could have been genuinely surprised by what they found in the books.

 

[pemerton]

So another thought on the doubled hit points monster problem.

This lead to fairly easy thumbnail fixes decently early on, cutting monster hp and increasing their damage. I saw suggestions of cutting hp in half, increasing damage by 50% or 100% to provide the same level of threat/challenge in fewer expected rounds of combat.

And with progressive monster design we saw that pretty much officially implemented over time in progressive revised monster math culminating in MM3 and then the Essentials Monster Vaults.

This is all exaggerated.

The base formula for hp didn't change, except later solos tend to be 4x rather than 5x standard hit points.

The base formula for NPC/creature damage did change, from 8 + level/2 to 8 + level. This is not very noticeable at Heroic tier, but is very significant at higher levels.

The other significant change between early and later monsters was (1) to reduce the defences of elites and solos (early ones tended to have +2 over what their AC "should" be based on role and level) and (2) to not gives brutes the -2 to attack that the DMG says they should have, and that early brutes tended to have.

If you compare Heroic tier standards and elites in the MM and the MV, you won't see much difference:

Eg MM Goblin Warrior, Level 1 skirmisher, AC 17, 29 hp, damage 1d6+2 or 1d8+2; MV Goblin Cutthroat, level 1 skirmisher, AC 15, 30 hp, damage 1d6+5

MM Gnoll Marauder, level 6 brute, AC 18, 84 hp, damage 1d8+6 plus good buffs vs bloodied; MV Deathpledged Gnoll, level 5 brute, AC 18 (19 at 6th level), 70 hp (80 at 6th level), damage 2d6+9 plus small buff vs bloodied

MM Owlbear, level 8 elite brute, AC 22, 212 hp, damage 2d6+5; MV Owlbear, level 8 elite brute, AC 20, hp 212, damage 4d6+6.​

someone picking up the 4e Monster Manual, whether someone entering and just getting one and going for the first one as the most core, or someone pulling theirs off the shelf to use with MM3, always had the bad math monsters there either leading to the slogging fights or requiring those in the know to adjust the monsters for use redoing their numbers from scratch every time.

This is all greatly exaggerated, as per my examples just above. I used MM monsters throughout my campaign, with the only changes being to up their damage to MM3/MV values, and to give Brutes a better attack bonus.

 

[pemerton]

In the interests of brokering peace among folks, I would hasten to point out that this is stirring the ashes of a long dead issue. Let's be fair here, a lot of our defense of 4e is sour grapes. We definitely lost this argument. People didn't like 4e, made their opinion known loud and clear, and we've moved on to 5e (most of us anyway). It never hurts to take a deep breath and just sort of let it go. OTOH, it is rather cathartic to bitch about something that has so little actual importance. Nothing pisses people off more than stuff that just does not matter in the slightest.

I don't play 5e. The last D&D I played was 4e. The game I've played most recently which that features D&D tropes is Torchbearer, which lists original D&D, Moldvay Basic and B2 Keep on the Borderlands in its ludography, but not any more recent version of D&D.

My interest in this topic is (i) noting the difference between "I don't like it", "it produces nonsense fiction", and "hypotheticals resolved by ignoring the game's own procedures and principles produce nonsense fiction", and (ii) rebutting factual errors. See eg my reply to @Voadam just upthread: there are these widespread claims about the difference in monster maths between the MM and MM3/MV which are just factually wrong.