Convincing 4th Edition players to consider 5th Edition

[Tony Vargas]

Personally I think it's time for a pull back to previous levels of complexity, but keeping the streamlining 3e and 4e introduced. ...I hated the 100 splat books with additional powers, feats and races....

One pattern I think is almost inevitable with games like D&D (that is, games that are expanded by adding to lists of things - spells, skills, races, classes, items etc) is that complexity increases as the game is added to. So, at the start of each edition, the game is simpler and grows in complexity as it's added to. Thus, one of the good (or bad) things about a new ed is almost always that it's 'simpler' or 'less complex'
(or 'dumbed down').

So that 'pulling back' is almost inevitable.

OTOH, if you compare the editions at the start of their runs, say initial PH/DMG/MM-only, I think you'll also find that the basic structural complexity of the game has also been decreasing. There were fewer disparate sub-systems with each successive edition, for instance. In that sense of 'pulling back' - pulling back whole editions, rather than pulling back to the natural starting point of a new edition - could actually bring more complexity.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nod. People don't always complain about what's really bothering them. Maybe it wasn't the amount of flavor text so much as the divorcing of flavor text from mechanics (which made mechanics clearer and less subject to 'abuse' or 'creativity' depending on how you looked at it)? Maybe it wasn't so much the amount of flavor text but the way it was presented? I don't know, and I don't see how WotC could have known, so it's hard to blame them for giving people exactly what they said they wanted and thereby getting it 'wrong.' Especially considering how much they get flogged for being 'unresponsive.'

yeah, it was something. It SURE wasn't the quantity of the flavor text, and IMHO most of it was on par with past editions. I think the whole thing speaks mostly to how it is possible for a WotC to just take a perfectly good set of game concepts and mechanics, and fluff to mostly, and surround it with marketing, product line management, and editorial decisions that practically kill it. They almost couldn't have done worse. I think when people talk about things like 'no flavor' it is like you say, that isn't precisely it, but everything around the whole game set them up to feel like they didn't like it.

For a setting-specific resource like Threats to the Nentir Vale, though, that presentation really works.

Hmmmm, not sure I understand. I failed utterly to see any reason why the lore entry thing was ditched. It made perfect sense and added more flavor to the whole thing while giving you the easiest story hook of all, you remember this old story about...

Maybe it's a perspective difference between those who have stayed active in the broader hobby continuously - playing other games, playing every version of D&D as it came out, etc - vs those who left the hobby and came back to it, or settled on one game or one edition for an extended period before coming back and checking out a later one? For the former, change from one ed to another (and within each) is incremental and related to the changes in the broader hobby as a whole, for the latter, change is sudden, jarring and betrays the core 'feel' of the beloved game?

Eh, well, I went right past 3.x entirely for the most part. We played 2e in the 2e days and kinda played some more 2e sporadically in the 3e days, and then started playing 4e. I didn't find it jarring, at all. It was more like "well, FINALLY here are all the ideas we thought up during 1e and figured would be in 2e and were disappointed they weren't there and then rolled our eyes at the way some good ideas were undermined by the rest of 3e's design. That was sort of how the thinking went around here. Of course we LIKE 4e, so I guess we might not be the people you're talking about...

 

[Obryn]

Eh, well, I went right past 3.x entirely for the most part. We played 2e in the 2e days and kinda played some more 2e sporadically in the 3e days, and then started playing 4e. I didn't find it jarring, at all. It was more like "well, FINALLY here are all the ideas we thought up during 1e and figured would be in 2e and were disappointed they weren't there and then rolled our eyes at the way some good ideas were undermined by the rest of 3e's design. That was sort of how the thinking went around here. Of course we LIKE 4e, so I guess we might not be the people you're talking about...

I hear you! For me and my group, we played 3.5 throughout its tenure, but we took breaks for other good games like Call of Cthulhu d20, WFRP 2e, and Star Wars Saga.

Since we played 3.5 up to the very end, for us it was, "Finally! A game that mainstreams all the neat stuff they brought in at the end of 3.5, and which cuts through the unnecessary steps to get to the good stuff." It basically formalized how we wanted 3.5 to run.

-O

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I hear you! For me and my group, we played 3.5 throughout its tenure, but we took breaks for other good games like Call of Cthulhu d20, WFRP 2e, and Star Wars Saga.

Since we played 3.5 up to the very end, for us it was, "Finally! A game that mainstreams all the neat stuff they brought in at the end of 3.5, and which cuts through the unnecessary steps to get to the good stuff." It basically formalized how we wanted 3.5 to run.

-O

Yeah, and of course it is an open question how I would feel if I'd gotten heavily into 3.5. Though honestly I don't tend to be really big on being down with any specific game. I mean now and then I do PLAY a little 3.5, just not much, and I was just not running D&D a huge amount that I felt like I needed more stuff there for a few years. I guess that MAY happen again, lol.

There are some definite things I want to see improved though. I can run great 4e games, but the way encounters are structured means oddly you HAVE to work the story side of it. The mechanics are easy, but ironically it is probably a tougher game to run than AD&D in other ways. I think they can improve that, but I hate to see that happen at the expense of other aspects of 4e design, it was just such a nice fresh take on so many things. I really want improved 4e way more than I want improved 2e. lol.

 

[D'karr]

I can run great 4e games, but the way encounters are structured means oddly you HAVE to work the story side of it.

This is probably off-topic, but can you expand on this a bit?

I've approached 4e pretty much like I approached all the other RPGs I DMed, and I always started with the "story". I put that in quotes because I find the story is actually when the PCs are doing things, but encounters were always there as part of the "story" that the PCs could interact with.

From the perspective you are talking about, what did you find you had to work on the story side?

 

[Steely_Dan]

I can run great 4e games, but the way encounters are structured means oddly you HAVE to work the story side of it. The mechanics are easy, but ironically it is probably a tougher game to run than AD&D

Whatever you're on I want a crate of it; I'm all for 4th Ed, but that has got to be one of the all time, most ridiculous and absurd comments I have ever read about D&D, no offence.

On topic with direction, totally digging flatter numbers , 3rd Ed started this AC 47, and club + 53 to attack nonsensicalness.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Nod. People don't always complain about what's really bothering them. Maybe it wasn't the amount of flavor text so much as the divorcing of flavor text from mechanics (which made mechanics clearer and less subject to 'abuse' or 'creativity' depending on how you looked at it)? Maybe it wasn't so much the amount of flavor text but the way it was presented?

That was my assumption. I really like 4E as a game, it just doesn't fit my playstyle as well as other games. But I love the design and what I have played it seems cool.

The books were very evocative to me, without major intertwined flavor text. But I am a HERO player, and I enjoy reading rules without flavor text - the rules make my brain come up with nifty fluff to fit onto them. And I don't mean this as an insult (although some might think is so) - reading the 4E PH felt more like reading the Hero system rulebook than a previous edition PH. For me that was a good thing. But I can see why it isn't for others.

 

[Bedrockgames]

, or settled on one game or one edition for an extended period before coming back and checking out a later one? For the former, change from one ed to another (and within each) is incremental and related to the changes in the broader hobby as a whole, for the latter, change is sudden, jarring and betrays the core 'feel' of the beloved game?

i dont this this really holds up. A lot of us who simpy didn't like 4e were with D&D through many editions up to fourth edition and have remained in the hobby playing many current games. Its not simply a matter of us not liking the state of the hobby (i actually think the hobby itself is in a very good place in terms of available options and games out there) as much as we just didn't care for 4E.

 

[Blackbrrd]

One pattern I think is almost inevitable with games like D&D (that is, games that are expanded by adding to lists of things - spells, skills, races, classes, items etc) is that complexity increases as the game is added to. So, at the start of each edition, the game is simpler and grows in complexity as it's added to. Thus, one of the good (or bad) things about a new ed is almost always that it's 'simpler' or 'less complex'
(or 'dumbed down').

So that 'pulling back' is almost inevitable.

OTOH, if you compare the editions at the start of their runs, say initial PH/DMG/MM-only, I think you'll also find that the basic structural complexity of the game has also been decreasing. There were fewer disparate sub-systems with each successive edition, for instance. In that sense of 'pulling back' - pulling back whole editions, rather than pulling back to the natural starting point of a new edition - could actually bring more complexity.

I think I have to disagree with you, a lot of 3.x is simpler than in 4e (comparing PHB/DMG), especially melee classes and magic items. The spellcasters got a bit simpler, but a lot of the spells got more complex with lots of save-ends mechanics and such involving a lot of dice rolling and book-keeping.

Some of the base mechanics of 4e are more stream lined than it is in 3.x, like the attacker always rolling to-hit against one of four defences. I don't think that makes 4e simpler, but more stream lined.

For 5e I hope they keep some of the stream lined parts of the game from 4e and remove most of the attack/defence scaling and much of the magic item scaling from 4e. To me it cluttered up the game to an insane amount when every character had 2-3 magic items with encounter/daily uses. What started out as 5 different powers to use scaled up to 10-15 quite quickly.

 

[Aenghus]

The spellcasters got a bit simpler, but a lot of the spells got more complex with lots of save-ends mechanics and such involving a lot of dice rolling and book-keeping.

IMO 4e spells were much simpler across the board. Because of attack rolls replacing initial saves, much of the work is given to the caster player rather than the DM, but I think that's better work distribution, and it feels more satisfying to me (subjective I know).

Spell descriptions in previous editions tended to be much bigger, as each spell was a self-contained set of rules. There were many disparate mechanics in spells, with increasing standardisation of effects through the editions.

But the major bonus of 4e spells from my perspective is that they are clear and unambiguous, whereas many spells from previous editions were ambiguous, and dependent on DM fiat for exactly how they functioned. I found this ambiguity highly annoying and avoided ambiguous spells unless I knew how a particular DM ruled on them beforehand.

The advantage of ambiguous spell descriptions is that players and DMs can try and twist them to their advantage in multiple ways. I don't like that sort of play, and don't see it as creative personally - I prefer a single clear understanding of the spell or mechanic, with no ambiguity or wiggle room. It makes for a more coherent game setting, which doesn't shift and distort due to the pleadings of the more socially apt.