A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[korjik]

Agreed (again).

I know when Necromancer Games was a strident supporter of 4e I was looking forward to it. I love their stuff.

When they, and almost every other 3pp supporter, bailed due to WotC's mismanagement of the GSL in a timely manner and lack of what they saw as reasonable terms for publishing...well, I wasn't very excited for opportunites to play.



Add that to everything you mentioned (and throw in shoddy quality of the emags, especially at the beginning and "greasy gamer hands" smudging their low quality ink) and basically, the whole launch was a disaster.



I like how you point out that it's not about the GAME of 4e. So often, people tend to assume that 4e and WotC are the same. I remember when 4e launched that I was moderately interested, and was a potential customer. But all the behaviors mentioned (and there are more) basically drove me away from WotC moreso than the actual edition.

Hell, I own more 4e products from 3pps than I do from WotC. That's not by accident.

I would give you xp, but I gots to spread it around first.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I dont have anything particularly against the ruleset, it has some quirks that could use revising, but it is easy to run at least. It is the attitude that the management of D&D has consistently shown that really grates on me. From the announcement, where 3.5 was bad n'kay, to the not delivering on the products announced, to the rather poor support the game has seen, I just dont feel like I want to spend my money on a low quality product from a company that used to put out good books.

 

[Mercurius]

I'd agree somewhat with the OP, but with a slant.

1. I don't think 4e needs a setting, but I do think it needs to be written to feel as though it's for a setting. Too often, and mostly by WotC (3pps are much better about this) 4e seems to be treated as a set of rules and not as elements of storytelling and roleplaying.

I'm not saying the sytem itself is gamist/simulationist/narrativist here, but I'm saying that the books FEEL like it's written to be a game, rather than rules to describe a magical world.

2. I do think that good adventures make for good gaming, and poor adventures the opposite (if your group uses adventures). Because of the way they released 4e (and the whole GSL debacle), 3pps were highly discouraged and inhibited from releasing adventures from the start. WotC released Keep on the Shadowfell, generally regarded by many as not a stellar adventure.

I think that there were very few good adventures early on in 4e's lifecycle, and I think that bad experiences turned a lot of people away.

Yes, these are good points - I think you may be right. Actually, your first point is very much along the lines of what I was trying to get at in terms of "secondary" and "tertiary" impact on sales. This also goes for creativity; one of the reasons The Lord of the Rings was so good was that the setting was/is very alive, very dense and layered. Even though only a small fraction of the world was exposed in the actual book, it "carried" it, like the tip and body of an iceberg.

On the other hand, I think this is what they've tried to do but evidently it hasn't worked out that well, which is why I am suggesting that it would have been wiser to actually explicate the default setting rather than just imply its contours.

I don't think a setting has anything to do with why many 3.5 fans failed to embrace 4E.

However, I *do* think a 4E based setting would have helped keep 4E players more interested.

What they should have done is another setting search. That was fun!

Yeah, that would have been good. As for your first point, I think you are largely correct, but it might also be a momentum thing: the more people like and play a game, the more people try it out (and like and play it). The reviews were so mixed from the get-go that it was like trying to reach your hand into a beehive to taste the honey while the bees were swarming - any "honey" that you might taste is tempered by getting stung.

I don't think *not* having a default setting beyond the nebulous Nentir Vale has hurt 4E (I bought Pathfinder but have not interest in Golarion as a comparison), but I would think that a strong setting would have helped it.

Still, part of the reason many folks choose D&D in the first place is to make their own stuff up - including their own game world. Or at least, that was one of my reasons.

And WotC's had plenty of chances to hit gold with a 4E campaign setting already - FR, Eberron & Dark Sun. If they haven't "been a success" already (and from posts its sound like all but FR were well-accepted), I doubt WotC's going to have much luck with the next world they put out - original or relaunch.

My point is that they didn't develop any 4E setting enough, and they didn't create anything new. There were all pretty much just hit and runs, except for Nentir Vale, and that hasn't really been explicated.

4E is a new take on D&D, but WotC hasn't really created and published a setting that exploits its strengths. I have never used a pre-published setting but I buy tons of setting material because I both like to read and browse it, but it is also good for "idea-mining." WotC tried a very different route with 4E but instead of developing an intricate setting to say "This is how we see the game being, this is what 4E means to us" they just implied and teased at the edges of the Nentir Vale.

 

[Mercurius]

And just to be clear, because I've seen repeated misunderstandings of my original post: I am not saying that this is the only or biggest factor, but that it is one of many core factors, but one that has been little discussed because it is rather subtle and, as I said, has more of a "secondary" or "tertiary" impact on sales and the game's popularity.

 

[Diamond Cross]

I do know that Greyhawk was barely mentioned in the core 3.5 books, but I don't remember if there was any books published for the setting like there was for Forgotten Realms.

 

[jimmifett]

I'll go ahead and get out of the way that I disagree with the initial premise that it's not popular as it could be, at least in my neck of the woods it is pretty big, with pathfinder in second due to lack of DMs for whatever reason.

As for having it's own setting... Nentir Vale is a nice small area that can be dropped into just about anywhere, and I personally think it's lack of definition helps DMs try thier hand at world building. At the same time, there were plenty of vocal ppl that disliked the plethora of books for 3.x. Do we really want a repeat of having a bunch of books for a setting you may not be interested in? Potential wasted development efforts when there is already plenty of material for existing settings, and some of the most popular have been condensed to the important crunch parts of 4e. For fluff, hit up ebay for old books.

I really think wotc took a decent enough minimalist job with a setting approach for 4e's points of light. It's really idea books to help you create your own world. You have 1 book for each major region, sometimes 2 or more packed in a book. You have the 3 planes books cover the elemental chaos, the astral sea, and the feywild/shadow dark in just enough detail to get you thinking your own stuff up. You've got the underdark covered with a book.

There are those that loved Eberron when it was new bc it didn't have every little niche filled in already like FR. Eberron is still widely open. Now bc PoL doesn't have enough detail pre-filled in, ppl dismiss it and 4e?

I've been tempted to use the PF in 4e just to throw some new stuff at my players.

Experienced DMs, and really, how many of us aren't at LEAST 30 by now (if not mid to late 20s), don't need all the details filled in for them. A plot hook here, a interesting bullet point in a player backstory there, and the world takes off from there.

I see it all as a case of someone moving someone else's cheese

 

[Mercurius]

Steel Wind, post #19 is a really good summation. Actually, I think Dragon is a good example of what I was talking about in terms of products that a company produces that have low "primary" (and obvious) impact, but a huge secondary/tertiary (and thus subtle) impact. My guess is that Hasbro came in and looked at a bunch of "bottom lines" and said, "Cut everything that doesn't make X-percentage of profit." So there goes Dragon, nixed by the Hasbroian vorpal sword.

And yes, that was a mistake imo.

 

[Janx]

seriously? Setting support?

I only recently played 4e for a few encounters.

Here's why I didn't buy 4e:

I had already upgraded to 3.5, somewhat begrudgingly

I was playing less than I had been, didn't see the point in investing

I liked the spirit of the pre-4e change talk, but when it came out, there was a lot of "these changes weren't good design" talk that further discouraged me and my friends.

Nobody else I knew was keen to upgrade either (common platform is crucial)

I almost never buy settings books. I did tend to buy generic splat books.

In 2e (which lasted 12 years) I bought darn near every non-setting specific rule book. I had thousands of $$$ in books.

In 3e, I only bought what I was actively going to use.

In 3.5, I bought even less.

Chief among the reason was I had enough books. I didn't need more.

I bet you at least 2 of my reasons apply to other non-4e adopters.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't think that this is really a supportable position for one to take. If the 4e rules were indigestible at low levels, the 3.5 rules (and, by extension, Pathfinder rules) must be seen as downright unpalatable.

Well, goodness, I must be stupid or delusional. Boy, do I have egg on my face.

 

[Dannager]

Or you could hate the big guy because he turned from the cool guy that got along with everyone into a giant bully.

Yeah, see, no, I'm pretty sure that this exact attitude is the result of the internet doing a marvelous job of exaggerating perceptions. WotC has, by and large, made very reasonable business decisions that would be seen as practical and would be supported were they in just about any other industry. There have been a couple of questionable decisions, from a business standpoint, but there have been no cases of WotC swinging its big gorilla arms around and knocking competitors or fans to the ground without due cause.

The fact that you perceive WotC's actions as those of a bully, rather than those of a business operation with the difficult decisions that come along with a business to make is, I'd argue, evidence in favor of my argument rather than evidence against it.

 

[Dannager]

Well, goodness, I must be stupid or delusional. Boy, do I have egg on my face.

See, this is interesting. Someone tells you that they don't feel that your position is supportable, and you jump to playing the victim of an implicit accusation of either being stupid or delusional.

Why isn't your response something along the lines of, "And I disagree: here's why,"?