What is the essence of 4E?

[Emerikol]

Fighters have always been the most popular.

They've always been pretty bad choices.
Big numbers, no vesatility.

They're Timmy Cards.

They've always felt really useful in my groups. Show stealers in fact. Perhaps it's just the way I DM my games.

I will say that magic items play an important role especially at high levels for martials. I'd rather bring magic in than hand wave a bunch of non-magic stuff such that it's like magic in what it does. Pf2e is in danger of doing this but I'm withholding judgment until I see the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I never knew that 4e was rushed out the door until after the fact. Up until well into that game, I had massively embraced every new edition of D&D. I've been accused of hating it before giving it a chance but honestly I almost forced my group to try it. I just discovered my issues with it after the fact.

So when I say what I say now, I'm not saying this fixes it for me. I am saying these things to indicate that I believe improvements could be made that many people would have liked and the game would have done better perhaps. I believe if they'd spent more time on the names of the powers the game would have been better. Some of the names seemed goofball to me. So more "serious" names would have made it less bad. Just my take on it.

Yeah, I think naming is tough. I mean, they had to come up with a LOT of names, and try to make them appeal to a wide variety of players. Not only that, but they had to think about how to apply all the 'classic' names from various previous editions, while also probably avoiding some labels that would seem inappropriate to the specific powers they were placed on. It couldn't have been an easy task.

I thought the most likely to be 'goofy' powers of the lower levels were actually mostly rogue ones, and some bard ones. Bowl Over was pretty amusing, though more for the effect than the name. Blinding Barrage I didn't think has a terribly goofy name either, though it certainly is a somewhat 'fantastic' power in realistic terms. The overall tone I got from it was of 'epic action heroics' really. That is in and of itself a bit goofy by nature, but not ridiculous by default.

As for improvement. I think that they COULD have consciously tried to emulate things that were in 3e/2e/whatever a bit more faithfully, but then we would have never seen the excellent 4e cosmology.

 

[Emerikol]

Yeah, I think naming is tough. I mean, they had to come up with a LOT of names, and try to make them appeal to a wide variety of players. Not only that, but they had to think about how to apply all the 'classic' names from various previous editions, while also probably avoiding some labels that would seem inappropriate to the specific powers they were placed on. It couldn't have been an easy task.

Yeah and being rushed makes that even harder.

I thought the most likely to be 'goofy' powers of the lower levels were actually mostly rogue ones, and some bard ones. Bowl Over was pretty amusing, though more for the effect than the name. Blinding Barrage I didn't think has a terribly goofy name either, though it certainly is a somewhat 'fantastic' power in realistic terms. The overall tone I got from it was of 'epic action heroics' really. That is in and of itself a bit goofy by nature, but not ridiculous by default.

Blinding barrage was an issue for us but for the reasons you give and not the name. The name was okay.

As for improvement. I think that they COULD have consciously tried to emulate things that were in 3e/2e/whatever a bit more faithfully, but then we would have never seen the excellent 4e cosmology.

I actually think they should never change an existing campaign setting but they should on occasion produce a new campaign setting. I think settings should run on a different development thread than the game rules. I actually liked the 4e cosmology especially the feywild. I always do my own settings though so it doesn't matter that much and I often do not follow the standard D&D cosmology. World creation is a lot of fun for me so I do a lot of it. I'm a frustrated novelist .

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I actually think they should never change an existing campaign setting but they should on occasion produce a new campaign setting. I think settings should run on a different development thread than the game rules. I actually liked the 4e cosmology especially the feywild. I always do my own settings though so it doesn't matter that much and I often do not follow the standard D&D cosmology. World creation is a lot of fun for me so I do a lot of it. I'm a frustrated novelist .

Well, Ed Greenwood might agree with you. The thing is, I don't think any game company REALLY has that option. I mean, WotC did BASICALLY just go back and create a world specific to 4e. I am not super knowledgeable or care too much about FR or DS, or Eberron for that matter, so I'm not much qualified to comment on them. I don't think the overall cosmology was ever that important to any of those settings though. Certainly the 4e DS was well-received. I don't remember anyone complaining about Eberron either, to be honest. It was just FR, with its crazy rabid Star Wars-like die hard audience that got all weird. I think they might have been best to just can that whole setting, but hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Emerikol]

Well, Ed Greenwood might agree with you. The thing is, I don't think any game company REALLY has that option. I mean, WotC did BASICALLY just go back and create a world specific to 4e. I am not super knowledgeable or care too much about FR or DS, or Eberron for that matter, so I'm not much qualified to comment on them. I don't think the overall cosmology was ever that important to any of those settings though. Certainly the 4e DS was well-received. I don't remember anyone complaining about Eberron either, to be honest. It was just FR, with its crazy rabid Star Wars-like die hard audience that got all weird. I think they might have been best to just can that whole setting, but hindsight is 20/20.

Sure they could. They just say that from now on they will produce modules that can be placed in a variety of D&D settings. While Greyhawk was the default 1e setting, by no means was it a problem to put those modules anyplace else. They were designed that way. In fact, often they'd give you multiple locations to put a module in Greyhawk itself.

I'd produce a new campaign setting every three years. I'd keep them all in print so long as anyone kept buying them. PDFs forever of course. Maybe print on demand too. I might even allow for new stuff to be produced for the most recent three settings.

I think one thing lacking in D&D also is very well defined cities like Ptolus. To me that is the ultimate city book. I wouldn't have to have the adventures necessarily.

Edit:
By the way Pathfinder and I believe RuneQuest chose the latter. They've settled on Golarion and Glorantha. I think D&D is big enough though to try the former.

The only other option to me would be to just have one setting and never deviate from it. Kind of boring. Not very creative but over time a group could collect everything. Every town eventually gets detailed.

 

[Ted Serious]

They've always felt really useful in my groups. Show stealers in fact. Perhaps it's just the way I DM my games.

I will say that magic items play an important role especially at high levels for martials. I'd rather bring magic in than hand wave a bunch of non-magic stuff such that it's like magic in what it does. Pf2e is in danger of doing this but I'm withholding judgment until I see the game.

You may just run for a lot of Timmys. They're not rare. They're not all kids.

The point is to steal the show. To roll huge crit damage on a kobold and crow over how far negative it went. It doesn't matter how poor his overall success is, as long as he gets the occasional moment.

4e didn't give Timmy enough and really hated Spike. It was a Jimmy game.

 

[Emerikol]

You may just run for a lot of Timmys. They're not rare. They're not all kids.

The point is to steal the show. To roll huge crit damage on a kobold and crow over how far negative it went. It doesn't matter how poor his overall success is, as long as he gets the occasional moment.

4e didn't give Timmy enough and really hated Spike. It was a Jimmy game.

Well my point is that it never bothered me or my players. It's a problem we never felt was an issue. So 4e set out to solve a problem that was non-existent for my group. Many of their "fixes" damaged the game for my group. Since the problem is about making the game less fun for some people, it's not an absolute problem. It's a problem for some people and some groups. Just like metagame is limited to groups like mine. It doesn't mean it is not of concern.

Now having said that. In 1e/2e, I would probably make the Rogue as subclass of fighter in the same way Ranger or Paladin was a subclass of fighter. So the rogue would get the full attack progression of a fighter. I don't consider the rogue extras any better than the paladins for sure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure they could. They just say that from now on they will produce modules that can be placed in a variety of D&D settings. While Greyhawk was the default 1e setting, by no means was it a problem to put those modules anyplace else. They were designed that way. In fact, often they'd give you multiple locations to put a module in Greyhawk itself.

I'd produce a new campaign setting every three years. I'd keep them all in print so long as anyone kept buying them. PDFs forever of course. Maybe print on demand too. I might even allow for new stuff to be produced for the most recent three settings.

I think one thing lacking in D&D also is very well defined cities like Ptolus. To me that is the ultimate city book. I wouldn't have to have the adventures necessarily.

Edit:
By the way Pathfinder and I believe RuneQuest chose the latter. They've settled on Golarion and Glorantha. I think D&D is big enough though to try the former.

The only other option to me would be to just have one setting and never deviate from it. Kind of boring. Not very creative but over time a group could collect everything. Every town eventually gets detailed.

I think that strategy is completely non-viable. WotC seems to follow something a little more rational. They simply support at some level pretty much all the old 80's/90's TSR settings, at least the main ones. FR, Greyhawk, DS, Kara-Tur, (I can't remember anything done with DL, but maybe there was). They've created exactly 2 new settings, Eberron and 'PoL' (though the later is more of a side-effect than a plan). Each setting goes fallow for a good while, getting a refresh maybe once a decade, or even less in some cases.

It makes sense. They avoid constant rehashes and fan angst, and yet keep restoking the fires of fandom for each setting. I just think that FR is uniquely possessed of a kind of rabid nit-picky fanbase that might best just be avoided. Certainly 4e would have done better to just not touch it. Instead they could have done a nice Kara-Tur or even Dragon Lance reboot. Either one of those would have been substantially less fraught and left a lot more room for reinterpreting the setting in 4e terms. Eberron was, by all accounts, a good solid 4e success, and DS worked GREAT.

Kara-Tur for instance could have done the 'Swordmage' with slightly different color, and the various themes and whatnot that were the 'OA' of 4e, plus a nice new look at a lot of oriental races and monsters, published a nicer modern KT map, and some interesting modules. 4e is uniquely suited to 'wire fu' and would do the old OA 'clan centered' sort of play perfectly well. I think that would have kicked serious butt.

I'm pretty vague in my knowledge of DL, but there's a lot there, and the lore, IIRC, covers a bunch of different time periods and setups, but its all 'epic fantasy'. It could have been pushed out as the world that concentrated on epic tier play. Obviously you'd have to support heroic/paragon, but it would be a great setting for epic stuff. PCs taking on armies of evil dragons, etc. Recast the 2 sides as basically a version of Primordials vs Gods, it would work well. No doubt there are some picky DL fans out there, but if its set in one of the more obscure time periods I think it work, plus the fandom is a little less crazy since it has been starved of material for 20 years.

I wouldn't touch Greyhawk with a 10' pole, for the same reasons as FR. It would just piss someone off, and its been done to death anyway.

I think they would have been smarter to license out to 3pps to produce additional settings, and make a deal where each one could introduce a race, a class, a line of feats, and some items, plus maybe one minor new thing. That would have all gone into DDI, win/win. WotC was so lamely unimaginative in its handling of all those possibilities.

 

[Emerikol]

I think that strategy is completely non-viable. WotC seems to follow something a little more rational. They simply support at some level pretty much all the old 80's/90's TSR settings, at least the main ones. FR, Greyhawk, DS, Kara-Tur, (I can't remember anything done with DL, but maybe there was). They've created exactly 2 new settings, Eberron and 'PoL' (though the later is more of a side-effect than a plan). Each setting goes fallow for a good while, getting a refresh maybe once a decade, or even less in some cases.

It makes sense. They avoid constant rehashes and fan angst, and yet keep restoking the fires of fandom for each setting. I just think that FR is uniquely possessed of a kind of rabid nit-picky fanbase that might best just be avoided. Certainly 4e would have done better to just not touch it. Instead they could have done a nice Kara-Tur or even Dragon Lance reboot. Either one of those would have been substantially less fraught and left a lot more room for reinterpreting the setting in 4e terms. Eberron was, by all accounts, a good solid 4e success, and DS worked GREAT.

You miss my point. The campaign settings would not be edition based. Or at the very least they'd be updated by a downloadable pdf for things like magic items etc... I'd keep the settings focused on lore and maps. So the NPCs are described in detail as to motives etc... but not so much with stats. That is included in the edition specific pdf. The scarred lands does that all the time.

Kara-Tur for instance could have done the 'Swordmage' with slightly different color, and the various themes and whatnot that were the 'OA' of 4e, plus a nice new look at a lot of oriental races and monsters, published a nicer modern KT map, and some interesting modules. 4e is uniquely suited to 'wire fu' and would do the old OA 'clan centered' sort of play perfectly well. I think that would have kicked serious butt.

I'm pretty vague in my knowledge of DL, but there's a lot there, and the lore, IIRC, covers a bunch of different time periods and setups, but its all 'epic fantasy'. It could have been pushed out as the world that concentrated on epic tier play. Obviously you'd have to support heroic/paragon, but it would be a great setting for epic stuff. PCs taking on armies of evil dragons, etc. Recast the 2 sides as basically a version of Primordials vs Gods, it would work well. No doubt there are some picky DL fans out there, but if its set in one of the more obscure time periods I think it work, plus the fandom is a little less crazy since it has been starved of material for 20 years.

To me DL was always so primary story arc focused kind of like Lord of the Rings.

I wouldn't touch Greyhawk with a 10' pole, for the same reasons as FR. It would just piss someone off, and its been done to death anyway.

I think they would have been smarter to license out to 3pps to produce additional settings, and make a deal where each one could introduce a race, a class, a line of feats, and some items, plus maybe one minor new thing. That would have all gone into DDI, win/win. WotC was so lamely unimaginative in its handling of all those possibilities.

Well I would keep those things up. Like most fans, I don't want the setting revamped completely every edition. That is why I proposed the settings be on their own development thread. Another option on the cities would be to create a city book and say it's a city in multiple campaign settings. Probably not viable at the very largest city levels but could be down for smaller cities and towns.

Also third parties are already making 5e campaign settings materials. So that is happening already. The problem is WOTC owns Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk and are sitting on the rights and doing nothing with them. I'd like to see Mystara get some love as well.

 

[Neonchameleon]

4e didn't give Timmy enough and really hated Spike. It was a Jimmy game.

On the contrary, 4e loved Spike. It just made Spike start from square 1, causing a lot of Spikes to quit in disgust.

It makes sense. They avoid constant rehashes and fan angst, and yet keep restoking the fires of fandom for each setting. I just think that FR is uniquely possessed of a kind of rabid nit-picky fanbase that might best just be avoided. Certainly 4e would have done better to just not touch it. Instead they could have done a nice Kara-Tur or even Dragon Lance reboot. Either one of those would have been substantially less fraught and left a lot more room for reinterpreting the setting in 4e terms. Eberron was, by all accounts, a good solid 4e success, and DS worked GREAT.
...
I'm pretty vague in my knowledge of DL, but there's a lot there, and the lore, IIRC, covers a bunch of different time periods and setups, but its all 'epic fantasy'. It could have been pushed out as the world that concentrated on epic tier play. Obviously you'd have to support heroic/paragon, but it would be a great setting for epic stuff. PCs taking on armies of evil dragons, etc. Recast the 2 sides as basically a version of Primordials vs Gods, it would work well. No doubt there are some picky DL fans out there, but if its set in one of the more obscure time periods I think it work, plus the fandom is a little less crazy since it has been starved of material for 20 years.
...
I think they would have been smarter to license out to 3pps to produce additional settings, and make a deal where each one could introduce a race, a class, a line of feats, and some items, plus maybe one minor new thing. That would have all gone into DDI, win/win. WotC was so lamely unimaginative in its handling of all those possibilities.

Indeed. 4e Forgotten Realms was a huge mistake. It was basically redesigning things for the people that disliked it (so wouldn't play it anyway). I'd have loved to see the original Dragonlance modules properly converted, with Tanis Half-Elven as a warlord rather than a fighter, and the game not having to twist itself in knots until the first cleric arrived. The whole aesthetic of the original modules just suits 4e much better than 1e the way Dark Sun just suits 4e better than 2e.