Hi. I'm Nemesis Destiny. Some of you may remember me from such threads as
Pemertonian Scene Framing and
its continuation, as well as
Nemesis Destiny's Houserules Thread. I have also participated in my share of 4dvocating for my edition of choice when I see it baselessly attacked as being unworthy of the D&D name, which is sadly oftener than it should be.
So, I am somewhat reluctant to join this discussion with all the predictable and tiresome anti-4e vitriol, but I think I may have something of value to offer the discussion, even if only anecdotal, in that I used to be a staunch h4ter but "came around" to the edition after it was released - something that was stated as unlikely in this thread. Perhaps I am an outlier, or perhaps not, I don't know, but I wanted to offer my take on things all the same, even though OP is likely long-unsubscribed from this trainwreck of a thread.
Fair warning - this will be long. Here goes.
I think I need to cover in brief my history with the game/brand. I started playing at or just after the zenith of the fad-phase, sometime in the mid eighties. I was introduced to the game from two places: the jock neghbours across the street (into the fad), and also my teacher in the gifted program at school (yeah, card-carrying nerd here). I couldn't get enough of the game, but unfortunately I was quite young and couldn't convince my parents to buy me books that were for kids nearly twice my age, so I was at the mercy of playing when the jocks across the road wanted to (which was not often enough), and soon enough they abandoned the fad for other things like atari, nintendo, bmx bikes, and chasing girls.
Fast-forward to 1989 and the release of 2e. I had just read The Hobbit in school, and thought I was still "too young" but by this time I have more control over my spending cash, so I plunked down for the PHB and a set of translucent blue polyhedrals. I was obsessed. I got a bunch of my friends into it, and we all started reading fantasy novels and playing D&D. This continued through elementary school, into high school, followed me when I moved to a different town, and on through the rest of high school and into college.
Fast forward to 1999. There had been many years of AD&D under my belt; some good, some not so good, but I still loved the
idea of the game, even if the rules (and bad DMing, and annoying players, etc) were sometimes poor at realizing those outcomes. I identify strongly with all those who spoke of 4e delivering on the promise of earlier rulesets (more on that later). With a decade of 2e under my belt, including the Player's Option material (whose limits we had thoroughly pushed), I was ready for another change, so I was pretty stoked when 3e was announced. I followed everything I could find on the subject online (including a lot of lurking around these parts). We even took the "things you can do to prepare for 3e" to heart and pretty much liked everything we saw.
Then the game hit and I picked up my preorder. I still had new-game blinders on (and would for some time), but others were less than impressed. I still think of this every time someone claims that 3e was some kind of great unifier. It wasn't. Far from it. There were plenty of holdouts at my local unfriendly game shop. Something one gamer said stuck out in my mind as the clerk was trying to sell him on 3e; "I will buy this and start using it only if I think it's going to
add something to my game." He walked out emptyhanded. I remember thinking to myself at the time, "what's wrong with this guy?" Now I know better. He had a point.
For me, the 3e era was one of intergroup strife, as one of my players (my then-girlfriend, now-wife) absolutely
loathed 3e. Some of the changes, she liked, as I noted, but as a whole, for her, it was a bridge too far. I struggled to understand it, but even then I was still so enthralled with the new shiny that I could not fathom going back. I figured she was just being obstinate, but her hatred for all things 3e, and eventually 3.x, just festered and she grew to hate it more and more. I still didn't understand. 3.x was supposed to fix all this. I also failed to understand why the game was coming apart at the seams as my long-running campaign chugged, lurched, and grinded its way into brokenness (double-digit levels).
This was before I had really developed any understanding of game design, or the problems that 3e had. I had no concept of LFQW, 5MWD, SoD, SoS, broken CR rules, and all the other things that made that game unfun behind the screen. I figured that I must be doing something wrong, or that some of my players were being powergaming munchkins. I committed Stormwind and Oberoni Fallacies aplenty, trying to lay the blame somewhere for what I would come to understand was a ruleset so utterly alien from AD&D that it was D&D (as I understood it) only superficially.
Fast forward again to 2007 (?). The inter-group strife came to a head eventually, with me refusing to revert to AD&D, and my wife refusing to play or run 3.x any longer. We began searching for a new game. This was difficult for us (rest of the group included) because we had a lovingly constructed homebrew world that we'd spent the better part of 10 years developing. What we decided to do was give D&D a break while we looked for the New D&D. We played other games we enjoyed, like Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and others, even branching out into more board games to fill our game night void.
I investigated loads of games, from Chaosium Basic Role Playing, to Harn, to Palladium Fantasy to Retroclones, and many more, but all were lacking something: they weren't D&D. They didn't
feel like D&D to us, and lacked the genre conventions that we'd built our world on. So, in short, they were unsuitable as a replacement. It was a struggle because I still failed to understand what I felt was wrong with 3.x in my heart but just wouldn't admit. I still played on forums regularly, and butted heads with folks who pushed crazy theories like the fact that the entire game was a broken mess beyond level 7 or so, and the way to fix it involved banning entire classes, books, options, and generally houseruling the heck out of it.
Yes, I used to be in the "how can fighters possibly be broken?" camp, and I detested the proposed solutions; either use the BoNS, which I hated for its flavour (no, I didn't try using it), or refluff a cleric as a fighter and take only melee spells. This was unacceptable to me. I didn't want to play a
cleric. I wanted a
fighter, dammit, and there was no way my fighters would be caught dead casting spells - neither clerical, nor BoNS anime-nonsense (before you flame - I no longer hold this view). No,
something -- anything, would come along and fix what was wrong.
Finally, that left us back in D&D territory, but by this point I was so jaded and pissed at WotC for making me rebuy all the books, and their continuous treadmill of crappy splatbooks. I'd tried my hand at writing my own fantasy heartbreaker, but that was just too much work and not enough buy in from fellow players that just wanted a published book series to refer to without having to remember a separate tome of houserules. I thought that maybe Monte Cook's Books of Experimental Might, just might have the answer, but as I read it, I liked some of the changes, but I found it a hard sell with the group, most of whom were scared of the uncharted wilderness that was the country of OGL 3PP.
I'd heard of E6, which was intriguing, and Pathfinder (less scary - got in on the Alpha), and also that WotC was releasing 4e. There was no way at this point that Wizards was getting another red cent of my money (rawr), despite the gentle pleadings of one of my players to give it a try.
No way, no how was my answer (and my wife's). Worlds and Monsters talked a good talk, and s much as I liked the look and feel of what they were trying to do, we'd just been
"burned by Wizards one too many times." But both E6 and PF were not working out either. Still didn't fix what was wrong in the first place (though it made strides), too many complaints remained. I was starting to wonder if those arrogant jerks I'd been butting heads with might actually be right after all...
Finally I partly gave in to my friend's suggestion and he supplied me with the intentionally leaked copies of the 4th edition PHB and DMG for me to read through. "Just read it and tell me what you think." He urged me not to prejudge. He insisted that we didn't need to try it if we all thought it was horrible. And oh boy, did we think it was horrible!
We weren't sure what to think, but it certainly didn't look anything like the D&D that we had a love-hate relationship with. We seethed at the horrid art (which was nothing like the promises of Worlds and Monsters), we hated the videogamey, keyword-infested stat blocks. We hated that the classes made us think more of WoW than D&D. In short, we thought it was awful - every bit as bad as we'd feared. Dragonborn and Tieflings in the core book didn't help matters either. And where is my beloved Bard? My wife wanted to know what they'd done with the Druid. We didn't give one whit at first about the changes to the cosmology though, because we had our own which we were perfectly happy with, and so that was not even an issue. I understand why people didn't like this change, but I thought the reaction was overblown. I even grew to like the changes. I found that they actually fired my imagination and inspired me in ways that the Great Wheel never did. I also understand why the shocking changes to the Forgotten Realms setting were so upsetting, but again, I long since stopped giving a damn about FR, and was more pissed that Greyhawk was nowhere to be found in 4e, so again, this was a non-issue for me. Though even I can recognize that sometimes to drive things forward, you have to turn your creation on its head. Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
Eventually, exhausted of other options and so frustrated with the state of our gaming that we were pretty much ready to pack it in and move on to other hobbies, we decided, "what the hell. couldn't hurt at this point. And if we hate it, we'll make a mockery of it!"
My buddy would run the game in his own "dark, gritty" world, similar to the promises in Worlds and Monsters, so we didn't have to deal with Wotsee trash like Dragonboobies and emo-Tieflings (I would have been much more okay with this if Aasimar/Devas had been in the core alongside them). My wife and I made the most obnoxious characters we could possibly think of; I made a slutty half-elf fey warlock (one of my most-hated classes in 3.x), based on Selma from the
2005 adaptation of Beowulf, and my wife made (with special permission, from MM1) a goblin Ranger MC Rogue. A cowardly human fighter, a hapless human paladin, and an obstinate human cleric rounded out our party.
We started out treating it as a complete piss-take, but lo and behold, we were having FUN! Soon enough we began to get into our characters and stopped treating it like a joke. This was actually just D&D. It may read like crap, but it plays like gold. That became our new rallying cry. And yet, we weren't fully convinced. As long as the promise of balance between classes would hold out, at higher level, we would concede defeat and give in to 4e.
To test that theory, the player of the Paladin offered to run a game in low Paragon. We would put the system to the test; no elaborate backstory, no need for plot - just run through a few combats to stretch the system. By this time PH2 was out. My wife got to try a druid, though she was disappointed that it could not spec as a healer, she gave it a try anyway, and built with as many secondary leader powers as she could. I wanted to try a Bard (my favourite class in any edition), but instead, I opted for a Paladin (my
least favourite class in every edition). I used the Longtooth Shifter race to build a damage-focused character to see if I could break out of the rigid class=role system. We also had a dwarf battlerager fighter (pre-errata), a half-orc warlord, and two human rogues.
Dammit, we were having fun with this, too! Combats were difficult, but we found that if we worked together, the seemingly impossible odds could be overcome. We had some close calls, but it was some of the most engaging D&D combat we'd ever had! And the kicker was that even though it was supposed to be a D&D Fight Club, we still couldn't resist roleplaying it. This was when I/we truly realized the power of the mechanics. All the powers and options combined to produce flavour
in play, rather than on the page. I couldn't help but roleplay my character as a fierce and valourous warrior who badgered the cowardly into action in the name of Kord (a bit like an honourable Klingon).
So that was it. We were converted. My wife and I were in love with D&D again for the first time since we'd met at the gaming table 10 years prior, and things only looked up from there. I finally felt like the game was delivering on the promise that it made on the back copy of the books.
Essentials came along, and though the tone from WotC was worrisome, the products were excellent and filled yet another niche in the 4e lineup. Options for players who wanted simple, yet effective characters! Finally! I liked some of the new design space that was being explored. It made me realize that the game could be pushed much further still. So when 5e was announced, I was thrilled!
Unfortunately, the 4e-bashing started almost right away, and from the designers to boot! Elation turned to disappointment, and my hopes crashed as interview after interview, Mike Mearls and his staff continued throwing 4e and its design assumptions under the bus, in order to curry favour with lapsed players. On the one hand, I understood why they were doing it, but I resented it all the same. I had never failed to have sympathy for the folks that felt betrayed by WotC in the leadup to 4e, but I couldn't understand their anger. I still don't. Resentment and disappointment, sure, but not the anger.
As the playtest progressed I lost more and more hope that the game would deliver on its promise as the Unifying Edition of D&D. Nothing I was seeing was delivering on the promise that it could play anything like 4e. In fact, it appeared to drift ever-closer to everything I detested about 3.x, with only the thin veneer of nostalgia imparted by superficial touches from AD&D, and occasional, ineffective nods to 4e design. I now knew what I wanted from a game, and how to recognize it, thanks in part to conversations with @
pemerton , @
Manbearcat , and other like-minded 4e players, many of whom have appeared in this thread, and I was not and am not seeing enough of what I need to be excited about the new edition any longer. I voiced my concerns, both here and in the playtest feedback, but it felt like I was just pissing into the wind, so I've pretty much given up at this point. Unlike the 3.x/4e transition, I've learned my lesson, and I've read most of the basic rules (where my time allows), and while it doesn't look like my cup of tea, I still have 4e, and I am in any case reserving final judgement until I see and try the books that supposedly contain the options to remake Next in 4e's image.
One drop in the bucket that flies in the face of what's being said about people not playing games they don't like, and not giving 4e a chance. I was very, very close to pulling the plug, without having even played the game, and I don't think I'm alone. I have seen post after post of folks bashing the game, but admitting that they didn't even play it. Or only ran a couple sessions using crap modules and declaring the game to be bad. But I was almost that guy! I went in with the most jaded and cynical attitude imaginable and the game won me over in spite of myself.
So that's it. If you're still here, thanks for reading.