So that's it for 4th edition I guess?

[Quickleaf]

4e's greatest strength, in my mind, has been it's rugged versatility for supporting homebrew stuff (on the DM's side) and for making DMing significantly easier.

4e's weakness, IMO, has been it's presentation that just deviates too far from older books and modules.

4e also shares a weakness with 3e/3.5e in that it is combat-centric and combats take too long overall. In both editions, a cunning DM and players can overcome this weakness, but it does take some effort.

I realize this is contentious, but I actually think 4e can do an AD&D style dungeon crawl like Dragon Mountain just as well as older editions...perhaps even better if the design of monsters and skill challenges were really pushed. So far the closest I've seen to a 4e design paradigm encouraging old school play is Revenge of the Iron Lich.

 

[Obryn]

I realize this is contentious, but I actually think 4e can do an AD&D style dungeon crawl like Dragon Mountain just as well as older editions...perhaps even better if the design of monsters and skill challenges were really pushed. So far the closest I've seen to a 4e design paradigm encouraging old school play is Revenge of the Iron Lich.

I looked into doing this, and the main obstacle with oldschool-style dungeoncrawls that neither 3.x nor 4e handles well is "quick-hit" random encounters. Both systems do a reasonable job at 1st level, but by the time levels 6+ are hit, things can slow down considerably.

As a huge 4e fan, I have to concede that nothing does 1e-style dungeoncrawls better than 1e itself.

-O

 

[dd.stevenson]

I still need to post my own mass battle rules... doh

Do it! Pretty please?

I'm not a 4E fan (for most of the edition warry reasons listed above) but I had a lot of fun playing around with encounter powers in mass combat. I gave each military unit on the field a 1/encounter power, and the PCs had the special ability to "rally" units to use the power again. Led to the PCs generally acting like real commanders and having a real influence on the mass combat without resorting to swarm templates.

...then my dad passed away and I sort of lost interest in the project...

But anyway, maybe I'm a market segment of one person, but for me I think WotC missed a real opportunity here.

 

[LeStew]

anytime a company makes changes to a "thing" to put out a "new edition" they do it because they think they've learned something from the "previous edition" that they can make better.

That being said, I'm hopeful that WOTC learns from 4e. Not necessarily in game play, but in the way they conduct business. The digital tools are a prime example of this. I can look in my PHB and see a VERY different DDi pitch than what is on the site now. Those sort of things make a company look bad. And really I think if WOTC didn't have pie on it's face due to the way it conducted business with regards to 4e, we wouldn't be here in this thread talking about the death of 4e.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's really sad to see people say "it's a good game but didnt feel like D&D". Which (to me) means if this game were named anything else it would be doing amazing,

That's been my PoV for some time. It IS a good game that never felt like D&D to me, and in my mind, I could see its system- free of ALL the D&Disms- being not just a good game, but a stellar one.

I have played and enjoyed 4th Ed, but it has a bit of a New Coke deal about it.

That has been my warning since the beginning, too.

In the end, I'll be sorry to see it go. It took me a while to warm up to 4Ed. It utterly did not support many of the types of characters I liked to make.

However, once I mentally erased the "D&D" part from my mind's eye, I found myself making different kinds of characters, ones I enjoyed*...and ones I could not make in its predecessors.

We only have one guy in our group who DMs 4th, and I don't see that changing. It makes me wonder if I'll ever play those other 4Ed PC concepts I have waiting in the wings.






* a process which mirrored the journey I took through 70+ systems in the 1990s

 

[GreyICE]

I don't see myself switching to next. The latest news is basically:

- We'll keep the 4E fans happy by making a tactics module
- We'll keep the people who like animal companions happy by making an animal companions module
- We just nerfed the fighter because he was getting too many nice things, couldn't have that. Oh yeah, we targeted his versatility, not his raw power. Good times.
- We're going to try and incorporate as many methods of spellcasting as humanly possible. No we have no idea how this will work with the Warlock/Sorcerer, who traditionally represented those other methods of spellcasting. SHUT UP WE'RE DESIGNING HERE
- We've removed martial healing from the discussion because we're yellow-bellied cowards despite the fact you can make a good argument that it's better than magical healing in source literature (and exists in real life).
- We're combining martial mechanics and differentiating spellcasters. AGAIN. BECAUSE THIS WORKED SO WELL LAST TIME.
- We're just going to insist you bring a cleric in every party for healing because LOL TRADITIONAL.
- Still no word on the 4E classes.


Yeah, I predict the end of ONE edition of D&D coming soon. I'm still gonna be running 4E though.


Mod Note: Please see my note below. ~Umbran

 

[ComradeGnull]

Looking at what has happened in the last couple years in the OSR and retro world, I feel like 'dead' doesn't really have much meaning, though 4e could unfortunately be the rare exception. This may be what WotC is recognizing; old editions just aren't going away any more. The loss of DDI and the stricter copyright controls might give them a legal hammer, but I think the RPG hobby as a whole is moving (to steal from Neil Stephenson) from 'feed' to 'seed'. Hobbyists are producing materials that rival commercial projects in quality and utility. Old editions are impossible to eliminate because of OGL licensing, reprints, official PDF publications, and widespread pirating.

4e was an attempt at making a game where the publisher remained a core participant in the experience after you bought the game and took it home. That aspect of 4e was a flop. It requires continually investing resources in maintaining services (like DDL) that a decreasing number of people are using. If you kill the service, you kill the remaining market. Online services like DDI are on a march towards a net loss unless you can constantly find a way to bring numbers into the system to replace losses from attrition, and practically speaking the tabletop RPG market may not be large enough to support that movement.

The question is how is WotC going to react to the fan community after they withdraw official support for 4e. If they crack down, they alienate people without building any new business. If they don't crack down, they risk trademark dilution and lost momentum for the new edition.

 

[LeStew]

The question is how is WotC going to react to the fan community after they withdraw official support for 4e. If they crack down, they alienate people without building any new business. If they don't crack down, they risk trademark dilution and lost momentum for the new edition.

I believe WOTC thinks they will dilute the IP if they let a 3PP take over 4e. But I'm not sure that's a founded belief. I wonder if anyone has picked up the 3.0/3.5 stuff and used it in PF. And you KNOW people have taken the retro clones and used the original modules.

If 5e can be an editionless system then 4e players (just like every other edition) can use the flavor however they want. In sense 5e is the most gamble of them all. Because at the heart of this debate (and really the edition wars itself) is what defines the system. Not the fluff. It's the mechanics.

So if 5E's modular mechanic is successful, all that has to be provided is settings. And that excites me!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

4E: So long, and thanks for all the fun.

 

[Umbran]

Ladies and Gents,

Rule #1 of EN World is "Keep it civil". You all agreed to such rules. If you cannot hold yourself back from name-calling and being insulting, you will be removed from discussion.

Please, folks. I can understand not liking something. But we are talking about how we pretend to be elves - it isn't worth the nastiness.