D&D 4E 4E Dislike - a hypothesis

[Odhanan]

I started playing with AD&D and loved it. I ran games with Mentzer and loved it. 2nd edition unfolded and I liked some stuff about it, but quickly was drawn away playing and running a multitude of other games. I burnt out on gaming around 1999, and came back to D&D with 3rd ed. I loved 3rd ed through and through. I slowly drifted away from it around 2007, and went back progressively to my first love, AD&D, and OD&D, which I discovered a few years prior. Then I took another look at 4e just as Essentials started to roll out, and looking at the latter, decided this was actually a game I could run game with. So Essentials has me back, somewhat (not running an Essentials game at the moment, but maybe soon). Today, I would run pretty much any edition of the game (but for 2nd ed unless asked, which I do not find appealing but for some its settings).

So I guess I'm not fitting into the OP's hypothesis.

 

[Odhanan]

I'm a 4E player and DM and don't have any current plans to change that, but let's be honest here. 4E is different from earlier editions--all earlier editions--in some very fundamental ways. Just off the top of my head:

• The hit point rules. Now, every edition of D&D has included what I call the "Hit Points Are Not Wound Points Paragraph"--a place where it explains that hit points are a combination of toughness, luck, defensive skills, yadda yadda yadda. But in all previous editions, that paragraph was just a handwave. You could disregard it completely and treat hit points as pure physical toughness, the rules supported that interpretation, and lots of people did so. In 4E, however, treating hit points as wound points would require some major house rules.
• Completely unified class mechanics. Every class uses the same arrangement of at-will, encounter, and daily powers. Before 4E, every class was its own beast with its own rules. 4E largely did away with that (although Essentials is bringing it back to some extent).
• Almost no effects with long-term consequences for PCs. In previous editions, you had things like poison, energy drain, rust monsters, permanent curses, and so forth, all of which could mess you up for quite a while. 4E has done away with such things; no matter what happens during the day, one night's rest brings you back to 100%. The only exception I can think of is disease.
• Rules rewritten from the ground up. Every previous edition of D&D has maintained a basic continuity with what came before--sometimes to its detriment, as when 3E kept the same list of wizard spells while altering saving throw and spellcasting mechanics (resulting in a massive power-up for arcane casters). For good or ill, 4E threw out the rulebook and started over.

4E also continues some trends from 3E, moving it farther from Classic and AD&D. For instance:

• Rigorous, precisely defined rules, avoiding reliance on DM judgement and interpretation.
• Focus on mechanics qua mechanics, while de-emphasizing the idea that the purpose of the mechanics is to help describe an imaginary world.
• Dependence on the battlemat.
• Magic items as interchangeable commodities rather than unique and legendary things.

In the end, while it is almost certainly true that the majority of dislike for 4E comes from 3E players rather than AD&D and Classic players, I attribute that to one simple fact: There are a whole lot more of them.

This is a very good post. I believe Dausuul is on to something here.
(must spread XP and all that)

 

[Greg K]

Wierd! Normally, I would not post this in a thread, but my post was gone. My post was about my own experience with those starting with pre-3e being the opposite of the OP's hypothesis. I have no idea why. There was nothing offensive or edition war involved.
Could the moderator, who removed them tell me in private why it was removed?

edit: the second post that I thought was in this thread was in another

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It might not have been a mod, it could be a glitch.

For best results, go to the Meta forum and start a thread there with a link to this thread, or PM any of the mods.

 

[Beginning of the End]

But if D&D is about heroic fantasy - and I guran-damn-tee you that every PHB in every edition says it is - then no, 4e is D&D.

Oh, for the love of edition wars...

Okay, let's see if we can defuse this:

First, the whole "what is D&D" thing is a powder-keg. But perhaps we can all agree that there are two facets to the question: D&D is a trademark and D&D is a specific set of game mechanics.

In terms of trademark, there's really no doubt that D&D4 is D&D. I mean, it's right on the cover.

So the only thing you can be talking about is the non-trademark portion of what defines a game as being D&D (as opposed to some other thing). You have chosen as your point of definition "heroic fantasy" and I'm going to assume that "roleplaying game" is implied.

Which means that your definition includes: Every edition of D&D every produced. Runequest. GURPS Fantasy. Hero Fantasy. Exalted. FATAL. MERP. Burning Wheel.

Yada, yada, yada.

In short, you've set up a criteria which utterly fails to meaningful distinguish D&D from anything else.

 

[Lanefan]

Also I'm currently DMing a 4e game with new things added on (houserules) in a long and suitably awesome storyline (not just a one/two shot) with character that do far more roleplaying then they do dice rolling (woops there goes that). The setting is a living breathing world that the PCs have a real effect on, it's not Points of Light, and I allow pretty much anything in the CB. It's yet to become "gamist" in any way.

Sounds excellent!

If you can sum them up in a Readers' Digest form, what major changes/houserules did you do?

Lanefan

 

[Diamond Cross]

Okay, let's see if we can defuse this:

No you can't defuse this edition wars pandacrap.

People just get too fuzzy of a feeling with saying "MY WAY IS THE ONLY CORRECT WAY BECAUSE I AM A GAWD SO BOW BEFORE ME YOU EFFIN CRETINS FOR I AM THE ONLY AUTHORITAY YOU NEED TO TELL YOU HOW TO PLAY D&D!"

And to those retarded pieces of I can only say you.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

His head- it assplode like a scene from Scanners!

 

[BryonD]

But if D&D is about heroic fantasy - and I guran-damn-tee you that every PHB in every edition says it is - then no, 4e is D&D. It's a different D&D then you are personally used to, but just as 3e was D&D, just as 2e was D&D, and just as AD&D was D&D, then 4e is too.

Just to clarify, since this was in a post replying to me and seems to be getting the focus, I don't really give a flip about what is and isn't "D&D". It is a name. The mechanics under that name are important because the name is so important to the hobby overall. But, beyond that, it doesn't matter.

That said, if your definition is correct and complete, then HERO is D&D, and GURPS fantasy is D&D, and Warhammer FRP is D&D. If I play along despite not actually caring, I will simply chuckle at your definition as being so open as to be meaningless.

I respect the fact that to a lot of people the name D&D embraces a lot more specific information than "heroic fantasy". There is a mountain of ultimately arbitrary but very specific history and legacy within the specifics of D&D.

To me, I like heroic fantasy. 4E is D&D, fine. Whatever. But, because I respect other people's opinions, I wouldn't presume that they agree. So I would be more clear. Kinda like I would not suggest I want to go somewhere that serves food when asked what kind of place I want to go for dinner.

My lack of interest in 4E has nothing to do with my loyalty or lack thereof for the brand name. I left D&D when I found better games, I came back when it happened to BE the better game. I'll leave PF in a heartbeat if a better game comes along. If 5E is it, I'll go back to D&D.

My lack of interest in 4E comes from the fact that while it is certainly a decent "heroic fantasy" game, it is somewhere in between #10 and #20 on my list of best heroic fantasy RPGs. I am not investing or anticipating ever playing anything outside the top 5.

 

[Mercurius]

Come on folks, settle down--don't forget, we RPGers are an aging group and nerdrants can be hazardous to your health! Plus, we've got to stick together, especially if the industry really is dying; who else do we have?!

This thread was not meant to enter into the question of what is and is not D&D; that could be an interesting conversation (assuming those involved could behave) but it wasn't the intention of my OP to go there. Rather, I was posing a hypothesis and asking, if you don't agree with my hypothesis, what is your answer to the "hate of 4E"? All I've seen is that there are different reasons, that my hypothesis is wrong perhaps as a dominant or over-riding reason, but that it may be true for some, even many.

Of course despite the above paragraph, I wish to address the following:

As soon as we all start arguing about "what is D&D," we have to be very careful. For me, there is only one line if inquiry, that I know of, that might actually further the discussion. To date, I have yet to receive an answer. It is:

At what point, in your opinion, do the accumulated changes to a game actually produce a different game? In other words, what would have to happen to a hypothetical future edition of D&D to make it "not D&D anymore," despite having the brand name on the cover?

If you can't answer that question, then your definition of D&D is functionally meaningless. It would be like trying to do science with a non-falsifiable hypothesis.

But can anyone answer that question? And does that, therefore, mean that everyone's definition of D&D is functionally meaningless? Maybe so. But I would take it one step further: because no one has come up with an adequate definition of what D&D is, we cannot really say that 4E is not D&D because of the continuity of themes, tropes, and rules that it does share with the D&D lineage. In other words, it has enough D&Disms that the owner of the trademark felt they could brand it with the name "D&D," and those who enjoy playing it--and many besides--call it D&D. When it comes down to it, it is only a relatively small percentage of D&D players that would actually claim that it is "not real D&D," even among those that don't like it.

To put it another way, the onus is on those declaring that 4E is not "real D&D" to support their claim in order for it to hold water beyond their own subjective inclinations; it is not on those that see it as D&D because of the above mentioned elements and, of course, the nifty little brand name on every 4E product (this is not to say that WotC could brand a can of tuna with the D&D trademark and it would be "real D&D," but that if you add the two together--shared elements with previous iterations of the game and the trademark--you come up with, well, real D&D, just a different form of it than some are used to).

How many boards need Theseus replace on his ship before it isn't the one he started on? How many times has your body replaced every cell, rendering you a completely new being?

Essentially it's a matter of perception.

As long as every change is minor, incremental and everything looks the same, Theseus may well tell you that he's still on the same ship, despite having mo original parts.

You probably think you're still the same "you" from when you were born, but except for neurons in your cerebral cortex, the human body replaces every cell in your body about every 10 years. You may LOOK like "you" and think like "you," but really, your brain gets a new chariot every decade.

So where "new" comes into the equation regarding RPGs is a matter of entirely subjective perception. Changes that made 4Ed "not D&D" to me (to answer your question, 4Ed achieved that status for me) may not be enough to sway someone else from accepting it as the same game they've always loved...maybe better.

Yes, it is a matter of perception. But I think your post only further supports the notion that 4E is D&D in a sense beyond any individual's viewpoint, that is as an inter-subjective agreement. You are still you, even though the parts that make up you are different than what they were 10 years ago; why? Because you are more than the sum of your parts, you are more than just any iteration of who you have been at any given time in your life. You are no less you as a 40-year old as you were you as a 4-year old. You are the entire process, the enter being-in-becoming.

Why isn't the same true of D&D? Well, it is.

The Theseus's ship analogy doesn't quite work because you use the phrase "the one he started on." As soon as any changes are made, it isn't "the one he started on." By that definition, only OD&D is real D&D, and everything after--including the supplements--isn't "the one he started with." Therefore the definition and analogy is false.

"The one he started on," or in the case of D&D, the edition we started with, is different for a lot of us. For me it was 1E (well, a first exposure with one of the early Basic sets but then on to AD&D; we're talking 1981 or 82). 4E isn't "the one I started on" but it is no more or less "D&D" than 1E was. Why? Again, because it is part of the same lineage. It is a development from OD&D to Basic and AD&D to BECMI and 2E to 3E to 3.5E to 4E to Essentials to 5E and beyond. It is all one lineage, one overarching "meta-game." Each very is different to varying degrees, but they are all D&D. One doesn't need to like a given variation to call it D&D, but one's dislike of a given variation is not grounds in and of itself to call it "not real D&D."