D&D 4E Can WotC Cater to Past Editions Without Compromising 4e Design?

[Scribble]

Well, trying to provide support for 3.x would certainly make you 'Paizo lite'.

I just find this view fascinating... You think Paizo now controls D&D 3.5? So even if WoTC were to start reprinting/selling the 3.5 rule books and offering additional material people would consider it supporting pathfinder?

The problem is WotC is just NOT going to suddenly start doing adventures and whatnot at the quality level that Paizo is. They may eventually, but then why not just do them for 4e?

Adventures are only part of the whole thing.

And again if you were to say resurrect BECMI every time you make a product you have to ask yourself "wouldn't we just sell more of this product if we made it a 4e product?"

Maybe? I think it's worth investigating. I mean who knows if you would- certain themes or ideas might just work better in different editions of the game.

That was the issue that TSR always had with BECMI. Their answer was to have it be so close to compatible with AD&D that you could just ignore the differences and run an adventure with either one. They labeled some as for one or the other game, but I can't recall anyone paying attention to that.

Well- you've met one I guess... We never really mixed the two. Well I guess that's a lie- we started playing basic, then after a few of us started playing AD&D we started pulling some stuff from AD&D in... Like magic items mainly. Eventually we switched to AD&D completely, and never mixed the basic stuff in, but I still know people who are playing just basic.

Either way I know it's never been done before... But I don't think that's a valid reason not to consider doing something.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I just find this view fascinating... You think Paizo now controls D&D 3.5? So even if WoTC were to start reprinting/selling the 3.5 rule books and offering additional material people would consider it supporting pathfinder?

What does it have to do with anything I 'consider' anything at all. PF is a slightly hacked 3.5, so anything WotC produces for 3.5 DOES BY DEFINITION support PF. My opinions are irrelevant. I'm sure they could make 3.5 material that was cunningly designed to inflict maximum PF incompatibility, but I somehow doubt that would be worthwhile.

And philosophically? Yes, I think Paizo in effect 'owns' 3.5 at this point. Assuming WotC insanely decided to 'go back' how would they even do that? Start reprinting old 3.5 books? You can buy most of them brand new right now at retail prices. I'm doubting there is a vast pent up demand for 3.5 core books. If they were to say publish adventures etc what game would those be used with? PF is the only active version of 3.5 out there (OK, there's Trailblazer too). The point is WotC has nothing to sell to that market that is not helping their competition more than them since they've pretty much said they consider adventures loss leaders anyway. It just wouldn't make the slightest business sense. That ship has sailed. Presumably it was well on its way out the harbor before 4e was even written since if 3.5 had been selling like hotcakes still they'd never have floated 4e past the bosses in the first place.

Adventures are only part of the whole thing.

Part of what whole thing? They could put out adventures, settings, and maybe ancillary products. All of those were all loss leaders for core books for TSR and WotC. Unless there's a large pent up demand for reprinted 1e/2e books etc that isn't met by OSR games it is pointless to make support products when the product they support isn't being sold or has such little demand in the community that it can't ever hope to turn any profit. This is a ship that has also sailed IMHO, a decade or more ago.

Maybe? I think it's worth investigating. I mean who knows if you would- certain themes or ideas might just work better in different editions of the game.

Well, I think certain things might well work better in various versions of the game, though TBH pre-3e versions of D&D were pretty darn limited in what they really supported well OOTB. I don't want to get into a long drawn out digression on that here, but I think compared to AD&D 4e simply does almost everything better. I loved playing AD&D, but when I've gone back and dropped into a game or really looked at it since seeing 4e it just brings back to me all the memories of the reasons I stopped playing eventually. I know that makes me NOT the audience, but for basically any concept I think you'd implemented more easily and better in 4e. 3.5 is sort of a different question, but see above, 3.5 is a closed door.

So, yes, if your concept is basically 'nostalgia' or 'pure dungeoncrawl' perhaps, then you might do it nicely in Basic, but is there really all that much left to do there? I mean I played the game for 20 years and have a lot of AD&D stuff, yet there are still decades worth of play value of stuff we never even touched. If I wanted to play AD&D I'm hard pressed to imagine why I would desperately need WotC to support me or even notice much if they were.

Well- you've met one I guess... We never really mixed the two. Well I guess that's a lie- we started playing basic, then after a few of us started playing AD&D we started pulling some stuff from AD&D in... Like magic items mainly. Eventually we switched to AD&D completely, and never mixed the basic stuff in, but I still know people who are playing just basic.

Either way I know it's never been done before... But I don't think that's a valid reason not to consider doing something.

Oh, I'm sure there are people that played nothing but Basic and hated AD&D with a passion and never ever touched any AD&D stuff. My play experience OTOH matches yours. We played Basic because it was what we had, and the day the PHB was released was the last time we even cracked our Basic books, though we certainly ran our AD&D characters through B2 a few dozen times...

I agree, because something hasn't been done before doesn't make it a bad idea per se. The question is, is it the best option out there?

 

[Scribble]

What does it have to do with anything I 'consider' anything at all. PF is a slightly hacked 3.5, so anything WotC produces for 3.5 DOES BY DEFINITION support PF. My opinions are irrelevant. I'm sure they could make 3.5 material that was cunningly designed to inflict maximum PF incompatibility, but I somehow doubt that would be worthwhile.

Well I guess I wasn't clear with what I said- I wasn't implicating your personal feelings had "relavance" it was more along the lines of I was trying to understand your thoughts... If that makes more sense.

I'm not sure if I agree. I think if they started reprinting/selling the 3.5 books and started releasing more products for said game, people would use them with Pathfinder... I dunno if it really matters much. If they're buying the 4e PHB to use as a paperweight do they really care? They're still buying the book.

I guess I'm still not clear why Paizo really enters into it?
There are people who like AD&D 1 and 2e. There are people who like 3.5 and people who like 4e. All of them seem to consider themselves as playing/liking D&D.

I think if they released product for those games, and didn't just deem them old and unsupportable it would go a long way towards happy customers.

In short I think the divide is artificial, created in part by essentially saying one type of fun is out-dated.

I think a lot of the ire is created by people trying to prove their own version of D&D (if only to themselves) is the REAL D&D by virtue of what's currently being sold by the company with the rights to sell that name.

Really it's ALL D&D, and since taste in system is largely subjective, why not continue to support those subjective tastes?

I just don't see a reason, other then not having the resources, to not do so.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That leaves 3 options:

1) Wait until 4e ages out and write a 5e that is retro. MAYBE you can walk a line where you lose less of your 4e fans than you regain of older editions fans, but that is by no means certain. Your game could be rejected by the older edition fans for not being their favorite edition AND rejected by the 4e fans for being too retro. That could be real ugly.

2) Simply abandon the 4e fans, write a rehash of AD&D and hope that somehow all the 4e fans will realize the errors of their ways and play it, and that all the older edition fans really really wanted the 'Genuine D&D' label on their books so bad that they all flock to your banner.

3) Try to market more than one version of the game at the same time by say resurrecting BECMI and continuing to develop and support 4e and beyond.

Well, then there's the 4th option, say nice things to all the older edition fans, throw them a few small bones with 'retro-ish' options and go on ahead with the game you've got now and just assume that being the biggest and deepest resource company in the industry you'll sooner or later outlast the competition. You could also of course try to improve the quality of your output, make money off of a digital D&D initiative, etc. In other words you could do what WotC IS doing...

There is certainly an element of "continuing to improve quality" that is the only good way forward, but I think there is also recognition of what I would call a "design spiral" at work here.

So to answer the question, I don't think they can do a new edition without compromising parts of 4E, because I think 4E--while a very good game and currently my favorite version--is not the pinnacle of possible D&D development. But I do think there can be a new edition that does not compromise certain parts of 4E.

I can't do a corkscrew image that would make sense, and anyway I suck at drawing. So let me try to paint this in words. Roughly:

Basic and 1E - caters to the "treasure as XP" idea of operational adventuring.

2E - caters to "storytelling" mode.

3E - caters to "world and character exploration" mode.

4E - caters to indy "narrativism" mode, or if you prefer, explict and unashamed metagaming.

Those are the differences--albeit very roughly. And certainly every game has had levers from which a sufficiently interested DM could mold it into one of the others. (You've had, for example, people basically playing "storytelling" mode with all versions.) And some of the outlying differences have bridged some of these modes (e.g. Birthright, late 3.5 crunch, etc.)

However, the differences don't tell the whole story. There has always been a "gamist" mode to D&D. Different versions sometimes expressed it in different ways, but it was always there. And there has also been beating up monsters, stealing their treasure, and the whole patina of "D&D as its own genre" that really isn't sufficiently described by "kill the monster, take its treasure" in that minimalist sense. And then there are the classic classes, races, and so on, with all that means for expectations.

So designers of D&D have spiraled around those similarities while exploring other aspects. Compromises are naturally going to occur among the differences in the spiral. There is nothing inherently superior about emphasis on operational adventuring, storytelling, world exploration, or metagaming-driven narrative. (Naturally, some people prefer certain ones.) But at the same time, there is design room to cater to more than one--especially with optional rules.

Meanwhile, there has also been a parallel but largely separate straight-line improvement in mechanics. Having a new edition makes some of this possible, but there was nothing inherent in the old edition itself that made it impossible there. If the 2E guys had thought of and wanted to use Base Attack instead of Thac0, they could have, and left the rest of 2E mostly alone. Once 2E was out, even if you had the idea, it was practically nullified as an easy retrofit. As this part of the design improves, the possibilities increase to accomodate multiple, competing play styles without too much complexity.

So, yeah. I do think it is possible to do a 5E design centered on the gamist assumptions as bedrock. Then have improved mechanical underpinnings that make it possible for each group to move the game towards those other, different aspects as they prefer. It is ambitious and risky, but possible.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well I guess I wasn't clear with what I said- I wasn't implicating your personal feelings had "relavance" it was more along the lines of I was trying to understand your thoughts... If that makes more sense.

I'm not sure if I agree. I think if they started reprinting/selling the 3.5 books and started releasing more products for said game, people would use them with Pathfinder... I dunno if it really matters much. If they're buying the 4e PHB to use as a paperweight do they really care? They're still buying the book.

I guess I'm still not clear why Paizo really enters into it?
There are people who like AD&D 1 and 2e. There are people who like 3.5 and people who like 4e. All of them seem to consider themselves as playing/liking D&D.

I think if they released product for those games, and didn't just deem them old and unsupportable it would go a long way towards happy customers.

In short I think the divide is artificial, created in part by essentially saying one type of fun is out-dated.

I think a lot of the ire is created by people trying to prove their own version of D&D (if only to themselves) is the REAL D&D by virtue of what's currently being sold by the company with the rights to sell that name.

Really it's ALL D&D, and since taste in system is largely subjective, why not continue to support those subjective tastes?

I just don't see a reason, other then not having the resources, to not do so.

Yes, I agree with you, in a theorycrafting sort of hypothetical way. The question we would then want to ask is WHY in the entire history of D&D (and pretty close to every other RPG I know of either) has each new edition marked the immediate end of all support for any previous edition?

I think the answer is just sheer practicality. There is a minimum 'overhead' level of cost involved with each product you roll out and add to your product catalog regardless of how much of it you're going to sell. There is also obviously a fixed development cost for each product as well. Many of these costs are somewhat subtle. The big ones are just explaining to your distribution and retail chain exactly what it is that each product is, how much of it you believe they should stock, etc. There's also the question of clarity with your audience. Is the new guy coming along wanting to play D&D supposed to buy 4e, 3.5, 2e, 1e, or Basic? Look at the confusion sown just by having Essentials on top of 4e. This is all on top of the fact that since you now have to provide support for 5 product lines instead of 1 that sales of any one given item for any one given edition is going to sell less. You also have to maintain some level of skill base available to develop for each one.

Suffice it to say that these and other considerations have pretty well limited EVERY game company to support one edition of a game in the vast majority of cases. You just hurt yourself a LOT in a business sense, and you don't necessarily actually increase the overall satisfaction of your customers with the product due to both confusion and simply lack of focus on one of them. There's a very real danger you simply hurt yourself far more than you help yourself.

Even if WotC sold nothing but some old PDFs there's marginally some of this. I could see them doing that though since they can more clearly explain the different products online (if they are careful) and at least there's very little cost involved.

There is certainly an element of "continuing to improve quality" that is the only good way forward, but I think there is also recognition of what I would call a "design spiral" at work here.

So to answer the question, I don't think they can do a new edition without compromising parts of 4E, because I think 4E--while a very good game and currently my favorite version--is not the pinnacle of possible D&D development. But I do think there can be a new edition that does not compromise certain parts of 4E.

I can't do a corkscrew image that would make sense, and anyway I suck at drawing. So let me try to paint this in words. Roughly:

Basic and 1E - caters to the "treasure as XP" idea of operational adventuring.

2E - caters to "storytelling" mode.

3E - caters to "world and character exploration" mode.

4E - caters to indy "narrativism" mode, or if you prefer, explict and unashamed metagaming.

Those are the differences--albeit very roughly. And certainly every game has had levers from which a sufficiently interested DM could mold it into one of the others. (You've had, for example, people basically playing "storytelling" mode with all versions.) And some of the outlying differences have bridged some of these modes (e.g. Birthright, late 3.5 crunch, etc.)

However, the differences don't tell the whole story. There has always been a "gamist" mode to D&D. Different versions sometimes expressed it in different ways, but it was always there. And there has also been beating up monsters, stealing their treasure, and the whole patina of "D&D as its own genre" that really isn't sufficiently described by "kill the monster, take its treasure" in that minimalist sense. And then there are the classic classes, races, and so on, with all that means for expectations.

So designers of D&D have spiraled around those similarities while exploring other aspects. Compromises are naturally going to occur among the differences in the spiral. There is nothing inherently superior about emphasis on operational adventuring, storytelling, world exploration, or metagaming-driven narrative. (Naturally, some people prefer certain ones.) But at the same time, there is design room to cater to more than one--especially with optional rules.

Meanwhile, there has also been a parallel but largely separate straight-line improvement in mechanics. Having a new edition makes some of this possible, but there was nothing inherent in the old edition itself that made it impossible there. If the 2E guys had thought of and wanted to use Base Attack instead of Thac0, they could have, and left the rest of 2E mostly alone. Once 2E was out, even if you had the idea, it was practically nullified as an easy retrofit. As this part of the design improves, the possibilities increase to accomodate multiple, competing play styles without too much complexity.

So, yeah. I do think it is possible to do a 5E design centered on the gamist assumptions as bedrock. Then have improved mechanical underpinnings that make it possible for each group to move the game towards those other, different aspects as they prefer. It is ambitious and risky, but possible.

Yeah, it is nicely put. I'm skeptical about your conclusion though. I mean you can make some very modest nods towards different play styles, like describing a few different XP systems or having some optional narrative control mechanisms used with say APs or whatever. I'm not really sure that makes the game a narrativist or storytelling or more gamist system in any significant sense though. For instance I know a lot of people make much of the difference in XP between 1e and 2e, but in practice the two systems are effectively just about the same. Very few people ever used training costs in 1e for instance, and given that all characters both work together and generally need to advance at about the same rate the difference between XP for treasure and XP for 'various adventuring activities' was usually pretty moot. Nor was the idea of specific rewards exactly foreign to players of 1e anyway.

So, while I don't deny that there's something to what you're saying, I think the linear improvement in mechanics is by far the most relevant and apparent aspect of the evolution of D&D and other variations are second order at best, and usually not even visible in play. Instead the variations that matter to players have more to do with activity focus and style. Does the game spend a lot of time on combat, or does it emphasize exploration or 'other activities'. How does it provide the player with different playable archetypes and what kinds of decisions and resources are emphasized, etc. In this respect different versions of the game are more varied, but I'm not convinced these things are fixed to little bits of the rules. I think to a large extent they are emergent properties that you can't just summon up with a slightly different skill module.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

@AbdulAlhazred ,

The gamist piece would not be an option. It would be a core part of the design, and embedded in it. You wouldn't be able to easily use this theoretical 5E to play Sorcerer or RuneQuest or any number of other games built on a different basis. So it is not "gamist or" but "gamist plus some X". The core gamist part is what allows a coherent framework for those options to attach to.

And the skill piece is a necessary but not sufficient part of such a design. Elements in the core must have hooks for the options to be attached to, where they matter for any "plus" piece that the designers care to support. I can't possibly see supporting modest options for operational, storytelling, exploration, or narrativism without this impinging on the skill system. That means, the skill system has to have places to bend with these options. I don't think you can get the bend with the current skill system.

Every such element would have to be handled that way--at least insomuch as options were going to work there. It might turn out that some things, like certain ways that classes worked, simply can't bend in that way. So ok, you don't get options there, even though supporting some styles could easily be embedded in the class by default. Instead, you stick to the gamist core and let the options shine elsewhere.

The unbending parts define the core experience for the game that everyone shares, and the options show you where and how far you can drift from that core.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred ,

The gamist piece would not be an option. It would be a core part of the design, and embedded in it. You wouldn't be able to easily use this theoretical 5E to play Sorcerer or RuneQuest or any number of other games built on a different basis. So it is not "gamist or" but "gamist plus some X". The core gamist part is what allows a coherent framework for those options to attach to.

And the skill piece is a necessary but not sufficient part of such a design. Elements in the core must have hooks for the options to be attached to, where they matter for any "plus" piece that the designers care to support. I can't possibly see supporting modest options for operational, storytelling, exploration, or narrativism without this impinging on the skill system. That means, the skill system has to have places to bend with these options. I don't think you can get the bend with the current skill system.

Every such element would have to be handled that way--at least insomuch as options were going to work there. It might turn out that some things, like certain ways that classes worked, simply can't bend in that way. So ok, you don't get options there, even though supporting some styles could easily be embedded in the class by default. Instead, you stick to the gamist core and let the options shine elsewhere.

The unbending parts define the core experience for the game that everyone shares, and the options show you where and how far you can drift from that core.

Hmmmm, yeah, I am not sure why you think this new skill system would be in any way more flexible than the existing one. It has certain characteristics and the existing one has certain characteristics. I'd have to see some detailed exposition of systems designed for different styles of game and why they are superior for that style and how they would somehow be better using one system than the other.

I would be FAR more likely to believe that the situation would be you would use totally different skill systems in different modes of play, or at least different in many details. It would be far better if they relate to the rest of the core system via one number than 2 values that might well not even be applicable in all cases. Admittedly a bare number modifying a d20 might not always either, but it stands the very best chance of being a relevant measure of success in the widest variety of situations. Again, simplicity of interface is a key aspect of modularity. Ideally you would really want to interject some sort of a level of indirection on the whole thing, but I'm not sure how you would do that elegantly. At some point there has to be a single 'hook' into "how hard is it to do this".

 

[Wayside]

Assuming WotC insanely decided to 'go back' how would they even do that?

By adding 3.5 in its entirety to the DDI.

 

[Jasperak]

I read the OP's question as pertaining to 4e's goals as a game and how the designers built those rules for a specific style of play.

Since Mearl's dials of complexity don't seem to deal with throwing out healing surges, throwing out treasure parcels, throwing out the balance idea of every character being able to contribute meaningfully and somewhat equally in combat, or throwing out the idea of relatively strict monster scaling, I cannot see how it would be possible to use the 4e design framework to make a game that emulates the style of prior editions.

Nor do I think it should.

I don't particularly care for 4e but from my little bit of experience with it, it seemed a solid game for what it is designed to do. It did fix some of the problems of 3.5--a game I actually hate--but the manner in which it fixed them, made the game unrecognizable to me.

I try to stay away from this forum because I would rarely have anything meaningful to add for a game I don't play. I hope that if I am right and the 4e framework cannot make a game to cater to all types of players, then I hope they don't waste time or resources screwing your game up. Seriously, if WOTC want's to get my business, make a game I will buy and play, but don't ruin a game that already has a sizable base.

If they can make the holy grail of fantasy RPGs I'll take a look, but I would rather POD of all the books for earlier editions that I don't have. Maybe it would be better to make different games for the different styles and let the market place sort it out. Aside from the lethality of Castle Ravenloft, I had a good time playing and cannot wait for my friend to get Wrath.

 

[delericho]

By adding 3.5 in its entirety to the DDI.

You say that as if it's a trivial thing.

When it comes to adding the old books (presumably as PDFs), this would indeed be fairly simple. And adding 3e support to eDragon is likewise easy - just solicit submissions for the edition.

However, the major selling point of DDI is the tools, especially the Character Builder. And those are tied very closely to 4e. You can't simply add 3e support to those tools; the software simply won't allow it. And stretching the existing tools to do this would actually be more work than simply starting over and developing an entirely new 3e Character Builder (and Monster Builder, Compendium, and anything else they have in the pipeline that is tied to 4e).

Now, it might be worth doing this, if the number of 3e players (or, rather, likely customers) is still sufficiently high, or if WotC believe that doing this would kill Pathfinder. But I wouldn't bet on either; I certainly wouldn't bet the entire future of D&D on it - and that's the sort of investment we'd be talking about.