What will happen to 4th edition?

[Raith5]

... but this makes even more sense, in my experience. There is a lot to like about any of the non-4E editions - even in the Gygaxian shambles of 1E - but almost every time I see a thread on these or similar forums about a particular problem with the other editions, I cannot help but think how 4E resolved that successfully.

So, yes, while I accept that 4E is seen as the New Coke of D&D editions, I have to agree with Balesir et al that in my experience, it has been a better experience in almost every way.

Other than the crap it stirred up online, of course.

This captures my view. I guess I what I feel sad about is the missed potential of 4e to be improved and taken forward by fixing its flaws and broadening the playstyle options - I would love to see how modularity would work with 4e!.

I dont think 4e was perfect, I think early on PC roles were too tight, key classes were delayed to PHB2 and sometimes classes were miscast in my view and there were too many powers and feats - and 5e addresses some of these issues. But 5e seriously misses some of the golden lessons for me by having more hollow martial classes with less options, a asymetrical system of the recharging PC abilities, non-proportional healing and seemingly less interesting monsters. But I could live with 4e's imperfections much more easily than the other editions of D&D that I like.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

This captures my view. I guess I what I feel sad about is the missed potential of 4e to be improved and taken forward by fixing its flaws and broadening the playstyle options - I would love to see how modularity would work with 4e!.

I dont think 4e was perfect, I think early on PC roles were too tight, key classes were delayed to PHB2 and sometimes classes were miscast in my view and there were too many powers and feats - and 5e addresses some of these issues. But 5e seriously misses some of the golden lessons for me by having more hollow martial classes with less options, a asymetrical system of the recharging PC abilities, non-proportional healing and seemingly less interesting monsters. But I could live with 4e's imperfections much more easily than the other editions of D&D that I like.

... and the initial adventures sucked. They sucked so badly that they redefined what it meaned to suck. They sucked so badly that WotC wasn't prepared to trust its in-house team to write the adventures for 5E. Oh well, at least they learnt a lesson....

4E was supposedly rushed to publication around six months before it was ready. It really would have benefitted from some more development - and more Rich Baker and less Mike Mearls/Bill Slavicsek - and some really thorough playtesting by, say, the CharOp guys at the WotC forums who have traditionally held a much better grasp of the rules for any of the WotC rulesets than the WotC designers.

Anyway, that's just spilt milk. And I am not crying over it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's my favourite edition from the 33+ years I have been playing but I do largely agree with these comments, and the other ones I snipped for the sake of brevity.



I think that makes sense...



... but this makes even more sense, in my experience. There is a lot to like about any of the non-4E editions - even in the Gygaxian shambles of 1E - but almost every time I see a thread on these or similar forums about a particular problem with the other editions, I cannot help but think how 4E resolved that successfully.

So, yes, while I accept that 4E is seen as the New Coke of D&D editions, I have to agree with Balesir et al that in my experience, it has been a better experience in almost every way.

Other than the crap it stirred up online, of course.



Killing players, eh? You guys sure do play for keeps.

By contrast, our D&D games across a range of editions have been largely free of interpersonal strife for 30-odd years: friends first, members of our D&D group second, and avoid public play like the plague.



Commenting on the bit I have highlighted in bold, but wanting to preserve the other parts of the quote for context, I have to agree. Something went seriously wrong and the worst elements really took control of the biggest soapboxes.



I will go with the fine wine analogy, even though I am the only Australian in Asia who is not only NOT an alcoholic, but also a complete teatotaller.

And on the subject of ageing gracefully like a fine wine, 4E remains the only published edition of D&D where the quality of the products improved during the edition's life. The designers actually improved in their mastery of the rules whereas, with every other edition, the TSR/WotC designers' skills devolved. If only we had had another year....

They might have gotten up to par? I think they did have some trouble grasping the thing they had done by inventing 4e. Chris Perkins really got it. I don't know if he loved it or not, but he got the essence of it to a large extent.

As for the Edition Wars, there were of course jerks in all camps, as always. There were legitimate criticisms to be made too, but there was a certain rigidity, an unwillingness to accept the possibility of anything really new, that got me. A large part of the community seems to have ossified in place. Once it was about new things and exploring new stuff, now it appears largely to be about re-enacting the past almost ritualistically.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) I think they did have some trouble grasping the thing they had done by inventing 4e. Chris Perkins really got it. I don't know if he loved it or not, but he got the essence of it to a large extent. (snip)

Oops, my comment about Rich Baker above should have included "and Chris Perkins". Definitely. (Ed Greenwood has also publicly credited Chris with actually getting 5E ready for publication after the chaos of the extended playtest.)

It has been reported in a few places - which qualifies this merely as anecdotal evidence - that many of the people who worked on AD&D2E didn't actually play the game and clearly the game suffered for that. Similarly, I think having people in positions of influence at WotC who simply didn't grok the game - and, in at least one case, wasn't even running a campaign - was part of what not only killed the edition early but allowed absolute crap such as Keep on the Shadowfell and Pyramid of Shadows, in particular, to screw the pooch at launch.

Anyway, the lesson is this: never entrust the design, development, and/or management of any RPG to people who aren't actually running a campaign in their own private time - and not simply as part of their job - using that RPG. And if they're doing it and not enjoying it then let them find something else... but don't let them do anything that would allow their names to be on your published products.

 

[Hussar]

Once it was about new things and exploring new stuff, now it appears largely to be about re-enacting the past almost ritualistically.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ill-happen-to-4th-edition/page4#ixzz3COY7PAYh

I think there is a large dose of this in the hobby. We've become very conservative in practice with people ardently defending D&D from the position of whatever came before. D&D has never been cutting edge, well, since the very early days anyway. The fact that we went so long between editions meant that there were loads of new ideas being circulated around the hobby that trickled into D&D.

2e borrowed heavily on the story games approach particularly in later supplements, where the meta-story of the settings was as least as important as the setting itself. 3e borrows heavily from Role Master, not surprising given the names on the covers, but, these were ideas that had been floating around for years. 4e borrows heavily from indie games, with perhaps less success. But, D&D has never really innovated, at least, not after about 1976.

Now, however, you see a huge number of "Return to" or "Back to" or "Adventure Du Jour Redux" kinds of products that apparently sell rather well. 5e's entire approach has been to try to turn back the clock in a large way, just with better maths. I won't be surprised to see Keep on the Borderlands being redone yet again. Or the GDQ series. Or yet another setting update of a setting that's been kicking around for twenty years.

I do rather wish that D&D would pull its collective head out of its past and start looking a bit forward. I mean, we had Eberron as a new setting, but, even that's what, 10 years ago now? We haven't had anything like a Planescape, or Spelljammer, or any really new settings for a long, long time. Even the new MM in 5e is simply recycling virtually all the old monsters from the game. And, of course, any deviation from tradition is met with vociferous condemnation that never stops.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think there is a large dose of this in the hobby. We've become very conservative in practice with people ardently defending D&D from the position of whatever came before. D&D has never been cutting edge, well, since the very early days anyway. The fact that we went so long between editions meant that there were loads of new ideas being circulated around the hobby that trickled into D&D.

2e borrowed heavily on the story games approach particularly in later supplements, where the meta-story of the settings was as least as important as the setting itself. 3e borrows heavily from Role Master, not surprising given the names on the covers, but, these were ideas that had been floating around for years. 4e borrows heavily from indie games, with perhaps less success. But, D&D has never really innovated, at least, not after about 1976.

Now, however, you see a huge number of "Return to" or "Back to" or "Adventure Du Jour Redux" kinds of products that apparently sell rather well. 5e's entire approach has been to try to turn back the clock in a large way, just with better maths. I won't be surprised to see Keep on the Borderlands being redone yet again. Or the GDQ series. Or yet another setting update of a setting that's been kicking around for twenty years.

I do rather wish that D&D would pull its collective head out of its past and start looking a bit forward. I mean, we had Eberron as a new setting, but, even that's what, 10 years ago now? We haven't had anything like a Planescape, or Spelljammer, or any really new settings for a long, long time. Even the new MM in 5e is simply recycling virtually all the old monsters from the game. And, of course, any deviation from tradition is met with vociferous condemnation that never stops.

Yeah, its deep set. I play in my sister's campaign these days, which she's now running as a 5e game to try it out. She used 3.5 before that. Now, she was WILLING to play 4e, and had fun, but a couple weeks ago I observed to her that she was still running the same dungeon crawls basically that we ran almost 40 years ago when we started (they're a lot better now, she's a pretty good DM overall). She basically said "Yeah, 5e is fine for me, that's all I want to do" when I lamented its unsuitability for the action-adventure stuff that I was running with 4e. That's pretty much the story today, and its easy to see why 4e wasn't greeted with more than at best grudging acceptance as a tolerable RPG. They want just exactly a very specific formula, to a T, and nothing else.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I do rather wish that D&D would pull its collective head out of its past and start looking a bit forward. I mean, we had Eberron as a new setting, but, even that's what, 10 years ago now? We haven't had anything like a Planescape, or Spelljammer, or any really new settings for a long, long time. Even the new MM in 5e is simply recycling virtually all the old monsters from the game. And, of course, any deviation from tradition is met with vociferous condemnation that never stops.

In a way, the 2e era was the most creative one in D&D's history.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

In a way, the 2e era was the most creative one in D&D's history.

Fluff-wise - monster detail, campaign settings (Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer) - 2E was the most creative, definitely. And we know from the subsequent revelations of financial mismanagement that than can happen when you're unburdened by any sort of profit motive!

Rules-wise I was going to say otherwise, but things like kits and the whole Skills & Powers line featured ideas that would be more fully developed in later editions.

Frankly, I think 4E was the most creative rules-wise in the sense that it was prepared to take on a lot of D&D traditional "proud nails" in an effort to deal with problem areas of gameplay and to stretch the envelope in terms of race and class choices.

Hmmm, then you have all the innovation of the 3.xE period by both WotC and third parties. How do you judge which era was the most creative? I ask that rhetorically, of course, because as you start digging in, there does seem to be a fair amount of creativity across the editions... but I think 2E was the edition that really "gave permission" to stretch the proverbial envelope.

 

[Hussar]

I certainly think that flavour-wise, 2e was certainly the most voluminous of the editions. Which makes it certainly seem the most creative simply through the amount of signal we have. If you compare monster write-ups, for example, obviously 2e is far and away more detailed than any other edition.

Mechanically creative? Not so much. It couldn't be really and still maintain compatibility with 1e.

 

[MoxieFu]

Fluff v. Flavor

Hussar, thank you so much for using the word "flavour". I loathe the way the word "fluff" has come to represent the alternative to the word "crunch". To me, Fluff is something that is unnecessary, it is superfluous. Back in the 3e days there were a lot of arguments over the importance of Crunch v. Fluff, and Fluff was the word of choice of those who favored Crunch. Back in those days, Crunch prevailed and it was more influential on 3e and even Pathfinder as well. Unfortunately the word Fluff stuck. I would love to see the word Fluff go away and Flavor take it's place. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Words mean stuff.