With 5e here, what will 4e be remembered for?

[Gargoyle]

4th for me was good, bad and ugly, all IMO of course:

Good:

Roles encouraged teamwork in combat.
Monster creation was simple and elegant.
Encounters were fun to design, run and play.
Tactical gameplay was well done.


Bad:

Powers for every class took it too far.
Theater of the mind gameplay not supported.
Feats were poorly implemented and there were too many of them.
Took too long to create a character.

Ugly:

Healing surges were clunky.
Warlord non-magical healing. Fun class, but the narrative had to be changed to match the mechanics, when the mechanics should support the narrative.
Multiclassing. Ugh.
Electronic tools were disappointing, and the online only character generator.

Essentials fixed a lot of problems I had with the game, but it was disappointing that such fixes felt necessary.

I had a lot of fun with 4e, and was somewhat of a fanboy of it for a while. But over time I realized that the flaws many people saw immediately were real and that WotC went in some very wrong directions with it. Much happier with the direction of 5e.

 

[Dungeoneer]

4e was the edition where when the table ran into a rules issue, I as the DM felt very comfortable coming up with a resolution off the top of my head. And then when we looked it up later, my resolution was often the one in the book. Once you grok'd the system, it was incredibly logical.

 

[BryonD]

I'm not really seeing a great deal of actual disagreement here, ByronD.

You seem to merely be re-iterating what I'm saying but then adding a line blaming 4E as if it was a person, rather than a product, which was marketed. < shrug >

You said the divided fan base could not have happened without OGL or Paizo.
There were people who loved 4E and played it. There were people who were not going to play it.
The divide comes with or without OGL or Paizo. The nature of how that divide played out is another matter altogether. But not the divide itself.

If you don't like my short-hand personification of 4E then feel free to revise that to address the people who laid out the plan.

 

[Emerikol]

You said the divided fan base could not have happened without OGL or Paizo.
There were people who loved 4E and played it. There were people who were not going to play it.
The divide comes with or without OGL or Paizo. The nature of how that divide played out is another matter altogether. But not the divide itself.

If you don't like my short-hand personification of 4E then feel free to revise that to address the people who laid out the plan.

I agree with you Byron.

If someone made it to 4e and loved 4e and pretty much thought pre-4e were poor sets of rules and are a long time D&D player, then they've already demonstrated the personality that makes them someone who will play even what they don't like. That personality trait though was not common in the 3e people who hated 4e. The 4e people assumed all those 3e people would compromise just like they'd been doing all those years but guess what they didn't. Many of them weren't going to whether Pathfinder existed or not. They had 3e.

 

[jadrax]

4e will be remembered by my group as the edition that proved they could not work together as a team. It was not the edition's fault

Yeah, I think had a very similar experience to that when I first ran it.

 

[TwoSix]

I agree with you Byron.

If someone made it to 4e and loved 4e and pretty much thought pre-4e were poor sets of rules and are a long time D&D player, then they've already demonstrated the personality that makes you someone who will play even what you don't like. That personality trait though was not common in the 3e people who hated 4e. The 4e people assumed all those 3e people would compromise just like they'd been doing all those years but guess what they didn't. Many of them weren't going to whether Pathfinder existed or not. They had 3e.

Yea, that's not a bad observation. I think 4e attracted a pretty high percentage of mechanically inclined players, as well as novelty seeking players.
Those, I think, tend to be players who look at a system more holistically, and can find ways to play to keep them entertained despite problems with the system. I certainly do this when I play PF, mostly by playing casters.

Also, I do think one hidden barrier to indie games (lumping in 4e as a game with indie aims, despite some conflicts in the rules) as opposed to trad games is that indie games require a greater amount of player buy-in to generate an enjoyable session. Players who aren't quite on board or have opposing aims often bring indie games to a screeching halt. Trad rpgs can usually gloss over these distinctions by brunt of DM rulings.

 

[Emerikol]

Yea, that's not a bad observation. I think 4e attracted a pretty high percentage of mechanically inclined players, as well as novelty seeking players.
Those, I think, tend to be players who look at a system more holistically, and can find ways to play to keep them entertained despite problems with the system. I certainly do this when I play PF, mostly by playing casters.

Also, I do think one hidden barrier to indie games (lumping in 4e as a game with indie aims, despite some conflicts in the rules) as opposed to trad games is that indie games require a greater amount of player buy-in to generate an enjoyable session. Players who aren't quite on board or have opposing aims often bring indie games to a screeching halt. Trad rpgs can usually gloss over these distinctions by brunt of DM rulings.

Good observations.

It kind of fits with my own impression that the big fight between editions is over people who actually play the fighter class in the pre-4e way vs those who wanted the fighter to be as appealing to them as the wizard class.

 

[Campbell]

I think the legacy of 4e can already be seen in games like Marvel Heroic Role Play, Edge of the Empire, Post God Machine World of Darkness games, 13th Age, and even Numenera. 4e took the indie movement's most important idea to traditional RPGs - that games should be designed for a particular focused experience and that the mechanics should encourage the sort of play you are looking for - and brought it to the mainstream for a time. The new development we have seen in mainstream tabletop RPGs in the last few years is evidence enough of that. All these games have different focuses, but they are all the result of a vastly more rigorous design process and much more transparent mechanics than existed prior to 4e's release.

The other area where I see 4e having a beneficial impact is making strides towards changing the culture of mainstream role playing groups. 4e matched its transparency of rules with a call for more transparency within individual gaming groups. It encouraged players to take more of a stake in the games they play and to communicate what they want out of play. It also encouraged all players to take responsibility for the collective experience of the group.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You said the divided fan base could not have happened without OGL or Paizo.
There were people who loved 4E and played it. There were people who were not going to play it. The divide comes with or without OGL or Paizo. The nature of how that divide played out is another matter altogether. But not the divide itself.

Sure there would have been some kind of division, just like every edition. That's not the point, though.

There wouldn't have been the same kind of division, not the one Emerikol called rather dramatically "our industries greatest civil war".

You can see this pretty easily by imagining a different 4E, AND no Paizo AND no OGL (and thus little/no OSR, which was significantly enabled by the OGL). Whatever it's form, there would have been a division, period, for sure.

Let's envision a 4E that was incompatible with 3.XE products in the way 3.XE was with 1/2E ones. Very basic design concept changes. However, it's inoffensive in terms of ability design and so on (akin to Essentials, perhaps, but even less risky, with no treasure packages, fixed monsters and so on - the details don't matter). No matter how inoffensive it is, there will be a division. It will be missing stuff some people want, and have stuff some people do not (you and Emerikol are showing this very clearly with 5E!).

Without Paizo, the OSR movement, and the OGL (which is responsible in large part for the former two), that division will be there, but it will be limited. Furthermore, with the lack of an in-print alternative D&D (in the form of PF and OSR games), people who reject it for a year or three will be very likely to try it again after a few years, and may revise their opinion.

Now add those three back in to the picture. Paizo eager to leverage the division, seeing their chance at the big time. OGL to help them do it, nasty GSL from 4E discouraging 3PP in general. OSR providing other opportunities to D&D.

Even though this 4E is far less inherently divisive, the division will be vastly larger than any previous edition, because of the OGL existing, and because Paizo, let's be real, very much want to use this (as is completely reasonable business practice, to be clear!), esp. as the GSL and incompatibility are causing problems for them, and because the OSR stuff is providing further alternatives for specialist tastes.

It would still be "our industries greatest civil war". Smaller? Yeah, maybe. Maybe bigger, because maybe this 4E has less stickiness, less reason to play it over PF!

I'll be honest, I think failing to accept the huge role the OGL, and resulting Paizo and OSR situations (and to a lesser extent d20 FRPG in general situation) played in the "civil war" is a real blindspot/oversight, a big one.

Of course maybe you're not doing that, it's unclear.

If you don't like my short-hand personification of 4E then feel free to revise that to address the people who laid out the plan.

That makes zero sense to me. You are responsible for what you post, not WotC.

 

[Emerikol]

I'm for diversification. Even though cola is incredibly popular some people do like sprite and/or mountain dew.

I just wish there was some recognition that it's about taste and not about "good" rules versus "bad" rules. If fun is the sole goal of any game designed for entertainment, then 4e was a lot worse game for me than 3e was despite any other features of either. Do I consider any roleplaying game perfect? No. Could I suggest things for improvement in any game? Yes. That includes the ones I like better.

My personal opinion is that D&D for traditions sake if nothing else should have stayed with it's core constituency. I also think that other fantasy games needed to be made that went in vastly different directions. Wotc could do it or some other company. I welcome a 4e style pathfinder game because I don't see how D&D can make everyone happy and we will only have constant turmoil as first one side and then the other tries to "control" the direction of the game.