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

[hawkeyefan]

It...was...the...catalyst. If it hadn't been introduced the group wouldn't have fallen apart.

We have no way of knowing that. Plenty of groups survived 4e. Plenty of groups had falling outs over other games.

The group fell apart because the members couldn’t resolve their differing views.

 

[Imaro]

Yup. If you ignore the dozens of hours of actual plays, two hard back books, thousands of words of blog posts, and dozens of other sources.

But yup. That one YouTube video was the sole source of information about 4e.

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?

 

[Eric V]

Can you imagine blaming a game for your group breaking apart??

Not the words exchanged during a particular session or something, but just the game itself!

Yeesh.

 

[Imaro]

We have no way of knowing that. Plenty of groups survived 4e. Plenty of groups had falling outs over other games.

The group fell apart because the members couldn’t resolve their differing views.

We have people stating their groups split over 4e... but I guess you'd know better than the people giving their personal accounts of what happened with their groups...

 

[hawkeyefan]

We have people stating their groups split over 4e... but I guess you'd know better than the people giving their personal accounts of what happened with their groups...

No, I don’t know better. All I’m saying is that given that things went the way they did, we have no means of knowing how they’d have gone if 4e was not a factor. We can guess all we’d like, but we literally cannot know.

I hope that’s clearer. Because if we can’t agree on that, then I don’t think it’s possible to agree on anything.

 

[Voadam]

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.

However this meant 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.

They had errata, errata incorporated into the online tools, and later the essentials monster vault to soft be a replacement core MM, but still for people coming in the first monster book is going to loom large as the option for their one monster source go to. This was a hit that would persist throughout the edition.

If you pick up the PDF today I believe it is the original, no online errata version, similar to how the PH PDF has CAGI with automatic pulls.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No one's claiming the game has a will but it had legacy expectations because the game was named D&D and the marketing claimed ze game would remain ze same... Alot of people have a (perfectly understandable) negative response to being misled.

Mislead, horse potatoes. Nobody was mislead. Such drama. ROFLMAO!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It...was...the...catalyst. If it hadn't been introduced the group wouldn't have fallen apart.

I seriously doubt you can establish that, nor that anyone can establish the contrary. However, if a group of people's group social coherency is SO LOW that a casual choice of entertainment device precipitated its dissociation, I'm going to guess that group was doomed anyway.

 

[Eric V]

Mislead, horse potatoes. Nobody was mislead. Such drama. ROFLMAO!

Yeah, that's wild.

There are some...interesting lives being lived out there.

Just waiting for "4e ruined my marriage!"