clearstream
(He, Him)
I hope it is clear that far from having any anti-4e sentiment, I'm very fond of the edition. I get why it doesn't appeal to all groups. I think a lot of groups used it in quite a different way than is often discussed here (focused on different aspects of what was available in the game texts)... to a certain extent the edition drew folk into one kind of play which, on sum of game text, it doesn't actually advocate.Sure.
User error is common in TTRPGing. Being quite deft at both the GMing role and the player role of any given game is a difficult thing. Its a skill to be earned via thoughtfulness, comprehension of principles/techniques/engine interactions and best practices, humility, and disciplined practice.
That is a good thing!
What isn't a good thing is what I see happen in a lot of Skill Challenge threads (historically). Refrains whereby people are basically committed to a decade + long effort of casting this sort of resolution and this particular game, 4e D&D, in as negative a light as possible and doing ZERO inventory of their own role in the problems their having):
- Fail Forward doesn't work!
- The fiction doesn't change after resolution!
- The fiction is meaningless!
- The fiction is too meaningful and there is no actual "game" there!
- The math is broken so the system doesn't work!
- This is an exercise in useless dice rolling and free form roleplay!
- You can't use Powers or Rituals in Skill Challenges! They're totally prescriptive railroads!
- The fiction of 4e is nonsensical!
- Intent/Goal-based consequences of action resolution equals meaningless, nonsensical, agencyless play!
- Fire doesn't cause ignition of flammable materials (and dozens of other wrong ideas about keywords and "Target - Creature")!
I could go on and on and on with these sorts of things.
The reality is, there was...and remains...a very large contingent of anti-4e sentiment by a particular (and particularly raucous and in your face...here and in real life) group of D&D players who have died on every hill...at every opportunity...for 14 years...overwhelmingly wrongly...who will never course-correct their wrongness and put it on the record because inevitably they're going to trot out the same nonsense 2 years later at first opportunity.
I am quietly confident that lessons will continue to be learned from 4e as time goes by. It was remarkable at the time that WotC were willing to take the risk, and had employed designers willing also to do so. I remember being very surprised when I first read it (not surprised by how it worked, which came straight from Bo9S, but that WotC took the risk.)