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

[pemerton]

The only part of that I disagree with is that it is too narrow. It is symptom not limited to simulationist rulesets.

Fully agreed, and I didn't intend to limit my remarks to simulationionism. It's just that, in my experience, it's less common for people to assert that they can run anything you like using My Life With Master, Dogs in the Vineyard or The Dying Earth. I think it's generally recognised that these non-simulationist rulesets are intended to deliver a particular type of experience at the table.

So you assert that a component when added can be difficult to remove or ignore if that component creates its own pressure to prioritize some, and subordinate other, aspects of the gameworld in the course of play?

I'm not sure that an added component becomes harder to remove just because of the pressures it creates. The difficulty of removing it is more likely to be related to its overall integration in the rest of the system. For example: removing the Craft and Profession skill from 3E would I think be pretty trivial. Removing hit points, rather non-trivial.

I do think that an added component can be harder to ignore on account of the pressures it creates, precisely because those pressures might become too much to ignore. So the existence of Craft and Profession skills in 3E, in combination with the obvious pressure on many players to make builds that are tactically optimal, tends to make questions like "How did my guy make a living before he started adventuring?" have a salience, and a difficulty of answering, that I'd rather not have in my game. 4e resolves this issue by allowing (for example) the player of the wizard to say "My guy was a pastry chef" without having to expend any character build resources for the privilege. Rolemaster resolves this issue in a different way, by granting lots more character building resources, but also using a type of siloing device to avoid making the player choose between "background" skills and "optimisation" skills.

You can sim any genre (inclusive of any worlds), provided you usefully identify what resolution systems and narrative events you want to sim.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sim" here - I've read your exchange with LostSoul, and I tend to agree with him that what you're describing seems something like what the Forge calls High Concept Simulationism (ie play that conforms to genre tropes and expectations).

Anyway, I'd like to avoid debating the merits of the Forge if we can (and given terms like "simulationism" are being used I'm not 100% sure we can). But my response to your comment about "simming any genre" is this:

*If you try to use Spacemaster (Rolemaster's sci-fi sibling) to play a game with a Dune or Star Wars feel I think you'll be pretty disappointed - purist-for-system simulationism will have a lot of trouble delivering that sort of experience in play;

*If you start to tweak the purist-for-system mechanics to make them "simulate the narrative events" you'll get a game more like Pendragon or Cthulhu - which will guarantee the genre experience, but which aren't really narrativist games. They deliver an experience that is, in some sense, predetermined or prepackaged - it's someone else's idea (the game designer's, mostly) of what that genre is.

*Whereas if you pick up a non-sim game like The Dying Earth, and play it with the "tag line" reward rule, you should get an experience which isn't like reading a Dying Earth novel in an especially intimate way, but more like authoring a new Dying Earth novel.​

That's a bit of a rough-and-ready description, but my own RPGing experience has led me to believe there are real differences here - in particular, between being rewarded for conforing to someone else's conception of the gameworld/genre, and making one's own creative contribution.

I would never point to 4e and say, "Don't do this." 4e does some things really well. But I don't think it was a good idea to point to 4e and say, "This is the new D&D." Plenty of people like it, but enough rejected the opportunity to play the new D&D that it can be said, definitively, that the new D&D was not well-received. All previous editions of D&D have largely eclipsed their preceding versions.

<snip>

4e is not sufficiently D&D, not from a creative standpoint, nor a financial viewpoint. It did not capture its audience, it did not successfully compete with the D&D already being played.

Now your conclusion here is something I've certainly accepted as a premise for participating in this thread, and am inclined to accept more generally, seeing as I have no personally-available evidence that would lead me to differ from what seems increasingly to be the received opinion.

I would query the why, however. I tend to agree with Vivyan Basterd that the situation with the OGL has made a significant difference. This is the first time that the owners of D&D, in trying to transition to a new edition, have faced commercial competition from their old edition.

I don't think that's all of it, but I think it's a good part of it, in two ways: (i) it puts pressure on WotC to come up with an edition that is very different from their previous edition, so that those with whom it becomes popular won't be subject to capture by those continuing to sell the old edition; (ii) it puts pressure on WotC to come up with an edition that is so popular with those who like the old edition that they will buy the new WotC edition and not be subject to capture by those continuing to sell the old edition.

I think satisfying (i) and (ii) at the same time is a pretty big ask. You might even think that the more you satisfy (i), the less likely you are to satisfy (ii) - on the assumption that those who liked the old edition weren't radically mistaken as to their real preferences in RPGing. And it seems to me that maybe this is what happened. WotC took a gamble that Ron Edwards was right, and that many people were mistaken about the sort of RPG they really wanted. And WotC got it wrong.

(Of course there's a bit more too it than that. Like Edwards, WotC also perhaps thought that there was a big untapped market of RPGers, who would be attracted to a non-simulationist game more than to a simulationist one. They seem to have been wrong about that too, although the sheer gamey crunchiness of 4e's character build and combat rules means that they might not have fully tested this hypothesis.)

 

[pemerton]

Every game of D&D I've ever played has given a pay scale for common mercenary types. Most of them have at least provided ballparks for the cost of a keep. I don't think it's necessary to say 4e has no support for such things; it is sufficient to say it has very little. Some of the D&D rules-sets have offered very sophisticated (albeit imperfect) subsystems for every bit of rulership, from dominion management to hirelings to mercenaries to ingratiating yourself with nearby rulers.

If by "holdings" you mean this economic element, then I'm happy to say 4e has no support.

I think there are other ways holdings can be important in a game - I'm thinking of the way relationships work in HeroWars/Quest, for example, where they can be used as Augments. 4e would handle this sort of stuff as part of the setting up of a skill challenge - that is, whether or not a PC is a Knight Commander of a castle should make a difference to (i) the framing of a "ducal negotiation" skill challeneg, (ii) the skills that PC uses (eg Stealth probably becomes more difficult, but Diplomacy easier), and (iii) the results of particular skill resolutions.

Any time someone says you can do X with rule system that does not strongly support X, I'm like, sure. I know it can

Again, my feeling is that it depends on what you're trying to achieve in your game. If I wanted to introduce a "stronghold management" dimension into my fantasy RPG I woudn't use 4e. 1st ed AD&D has some rules, although they're pretty sparse. I don't know Magic Medieval World cover to cover, but my feeling is that that might be a place to start.

On the other hand, when it comes to ducal negotiations - which is the part of a holdings-focused game that I'm personally more interested in - AD&D doesn't give me much beyond the reaction table and morale rules. 4e, on the other hand, gives me skill challenges, which establish parameters for DCs and for the ratio of success-to-failure points to suit purposes of pacing and difficulty. In DMG2 I also get advice at the metagame level of how much benefit to a given skill check a player should get for expending various sorts of resoruces (money, power-usages, etc).

Some people don't feel that the skill challenge framework adds anything. Fair enough. My own view is that, having GMed a lot of unstructured social skill resolution using Rolemaster, the introduction of structure makes a lot of difference. I find it makes it easier for players to inject their own conception of how the scene should unfold, and makes it more likely that outcomes will result which no one anticipated going into the challenge. This latter happens because the structure requires the participants in the game to make certain decisions about the state of the gameworld at certain times, that are responsive to the unfolding prior state of the gameworld. And then the mechanics also determine that at certain points (ie when successes are scored) those decisions become locked in, as true of the gameworld.

(This also connects to the idea in my previous post that different games can place more or less emphasis on predetermination of theme and content.)

There are differences of detail in the skill challenge mechanics from the Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel, or Extended Contests in HeroWars/Quest. But the basic idea of the mechanic is in my view pretty similar. And I see it as having roughly the same virtues (or flaws, for those who don't like this sort of mechanic).

3e handles becoming a demigod just fine. Just play past 18th level, basically. If you want to, use some kind of epic rules system on top of level 20, or invent some prestige classes that literally grant divinity. You can bolt on Bloodlines rules, or use the Deities & Demigods rules to allow them to take divine ranks. You have a LOT of options.

I don't see how this doesn't fall foul of your own objection. 3E DDG, in its section on divine ascension, leaves it up to the GM. I'm pretty sure there is no ECL-style mechanic for divine ranks. At 18th+, or even epic levels (as per the Handbook), there is no mechanical way of saying "I'm a demigod".

In 4e becoming a demigod is an option built seamlessly into the core rules on character build and development. Not only is this a point on which I think that 4e is clearly different from 3E, I think it tells us a lot about what 4e is (thematically) concerned with. And I think, in turn, that this is part of what causes some of the objections to the way 4e treats the Martial power source. For those who see even an 18th level fighter in 3E as still just a really tough mortal (like Conan, say), then the 4e treatment of the martial epic tier - and the way that then ramifies back through even the lower-level martial powers - is always going to be objectionable, I think.

3e provides the bare bones to resolve just about anything. 4e gives you a structure and sort of asks you to fill in the resolution system.

I think this is sort of right, but incomplete. It's about how the resolution system is "filled in". 4e's structure gives the players and GM certain guarantees: that the risks will be of a certain degree, that the pacing will work in a certain way, etc. Metagame guarantees, if you like, about some basic features of the play experience. But it demands that the players and GM feed in the actual content. (Again, in my view a lot like HeroWars/Quest).

3E doesn't make those demands. But it doesn't give those sorts of guarantees either. (And again, this is not a criticism. It's a diagnosis of different mechanical systems.)

Compare to 3e which gives you, say, interpersonal situations: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive.

These skills all exist in 4e as well (Sense Motive renamed as Insight). It's the way they're used that's different. Skill challenge resolution is very different from "free form" social skill resolution, and from making a single roll against a single DC to see whether you influence the person or not.

4e doesn't really provide lots of subsystems. You have a few flavors of skill challenges, and that's basically it.

Again, like HeroWars/Quest. (Which nevertheless, these days, bill itself - not implausibly - as a universal game. I don't think 4e can be a universal game because of (i) it's combat engine, and (ii) it's very genre-heavy character build rules. But skill challenges themselves are a potentially universal mechanics.)

Ultimately the structure is identical to a Grimtooth's trap: some arbitrary number of components, plenty of room for player creativity in how to defeat each component, decidedly limited paramters. If the PCs to go over-under or otherwise approach in an unconventional way, I guess you get to improvise a skill challenge. Which is not, reputedly, easy.

I don't agree the parameters are limited. And the notion that it's not easy to improvise a skill challenge is (in my view) not true at all. I'd add: a 4e GM who can't improvise skill challenges is like an AD&D GM who can't work out what the goblins do when the PCs try to smoke them out of their lair unless the response is written down in the module notes. An AD&D GM, to run the game, has to be able to improvise the dungeon-dwellers' operational responses to unexpected PC activities. A 4e GM, to run the game, has to be able to improvise skill challenges as they unfold in unexpected directions.

you can't look at your character sheet and guess how effective your character is at persuasion; that depends on how the GM structures the encounter. You could have high modifiers and still stumble through a scene if the GM sets high DCs for individual components of the skill challenge. Or just includes lots of components.

Now this is a very interesting point. I don't think it's quite true, but it does get at something interesting.

First, as to the DCs - the skill challenge rules give guidelines on what sorts of DCs the GM should use. This is the overall guarantee that the players have that the GM is not just trying to crush them. It's a bit like CR/EL in 3E, or the 4e combat encounter building guidelines. Different GMs use different techniques to signal to the players when an encounter is of a strikingly high level - from simply pointing out to players of first level PCs that they see a giant approaching, to more subtle cues or the use of knowledge skills or whatever. All these sorts of techniques are also available in 4e.

As to the number of components - on different occasions I do or don't let the players know how many successes they need, just as sometimes in a combat encounter I reveal all the opponents, but on other occasions keep some opponents concealed from the players until the opportune time to strike. (This obviously raises issues along the lines of - if you tricked them once, how can they ever trust you again? But in practice, with people who know one another well, I find this tends not to be such a big issue.)

But even when the players are thwarted in a skill challenge because of the number of components, it doesn't follow that the PC was not a good persuader (or climber, or whatever). It's just that despite being a good persuader the challenge was just too great. Too many complications arose. Not unlike looking at your combat stats, knowing that you're a combat god for your level, and nevertheless losing a fight against a giant just because the giant was too tough.

At some points I am undoubtedly lowballing 4e's capabilities, because I don't know it well. I can speak to my impressions from warily eyeballing it, trying to decide if, in fact, I had to try it at some point. Despite some strong incentives, I went with a no.

I think you are lowballing its capabilities. I think that effects some of your points, but not all of them. And obviously you're under no obligation to actually play the game to see what the truth is. I'm hoping, though, that you'll at least consider the reports of those who have played the game.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you guys are talkin' about how different editions would handle non combat challenges, might I suggest takin' a look at my Ah! What Edition to use thread? Promoting your own old thread may be lame but I think it really is relevant to the situation. All though 3.5 got more votes then 4th Edition, many of the posts supported not using any rules all and just improving everything.

 

[pemerton]

Besides the reason given by Nifft in that thread for using rules - that they help resolve conflicts where these arise - another reason is that rules - or at least some sorts of rules - can inject decision points that are likely to push things in unexpected directions.

With pure improv this may not so often be the case (depending in part, I guess, on the skill of your players as improv actors). In practice, I find that the border between "free play" and "GM fiat" can be a pretty narrow one.

 

[Lanefan]

Now your conclusion here is something I've certainly accepted as a premise for participating in this thread, and am inclined to accept more generally, seeing as I have no personally-available evidence that would lead me to differ from what seems increasingly to be the received opinion.

I would query the why, however. I tend to agree with Vivyan Basterd that the situation with the OGL has made a significant difference. This is the first time that the owners of D&D, in trying to transition to a new edition, have faced commercial competition from their old edition.

Erm, not quite true. When 2e was released 1e was still in print and Basic was either still in print or had just gone out of it. 1e and 2e overlapped by about 2 years, if memory serves: TSR was in essence competing with itself.

This is, however, the first time the D+D owners have faced significant *external* competition based on an older edition.

That, and the 1e-to-2e transition was nowhere near as big a change in the system as the transitions from 2-3 and 3-4 have been. 1e and 2e could overlap because material for one could quite easily be used in the other.

Lan-"more and more wondering what 5e will hold"-efan

 

[Neonchameleon]

Every game of D&D I've ever played has given a pay scale for common mercenary types. Most of them have at least provided ballparks for the cost of a keep. I don't think it's necessary to say 4e has no support for such things; it is sufficient to say it has very little. Some of the D&D rules-sets have offered very sophisticated (albeit imperfect) subsystems for every bit of rulership, from dominion management to hirelings to mercenaries to ingratiating yourself with nearby rulers.

And by doing so they are locking you into a socio-economic model. I want most of my socio-economics (and for that matter my ecologies) to be in my world books, not in my core rules. Because they are going to be very different from world to world. The more tightly my game rules are integrated with the socioeconomics of the default setting, the more they get in the way of trying to build any other system. To use a trivial example, I'd expect the costs for hiring a warband on Athas to be entirely different from those for hiring one in the Realms.

3e provides the bare bones to resolve just about anything. 4e gives you a structure and sort of asks you to fill in the resolution system.

3e gives you a skill system. 4e gives you a skill system and a skill challenge system. Skill challenges aren't always applicable.

My understand is that this may have gotten better but there's your starting place. Compare to 3e which gives you, say, interpersonal situations: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive.

As Pmerton has mentioned, 4e has Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Insight (which is simply Sense Motive by another name). And skill checks are still alive and kicking. It's simply that 4e has skill challenges as well as skill checks; a skill check is for resolution of a pass-fail situation whereas a skill challenge is for a more complex scene long situation.

4e doesn't really provide lots of subsystems. You have a few flavors of skill challenges, and that's basically it.

Indeed. It's a very flexible tool.

Not only that, you can't look at your character sheet and guess how effective your character is at persuasion; that depends on how the GM structures the encounter. You could have high modifiers and still stumble through a scene if the GM sets high DCs for individual components of the skill challenge. Or just includes lots of components.

You're comparing apples with oranges here. It's trivial to look at your character sheet and guess how effective your character is at persuasion. What's your charisma? Which skills do you have trained? Do you have any relevant utility powers? What your character sheet won't tell you is how resistant NPCs are to what you're trying to persuade them of/to do - whether they have insight trained, and a whole range of other factors.

3e handles becoming a demigod just fine. Just play past 18th level, basically.

1: Demigod has a definition in 3e. Divine rank 0.
2: That doesn't really help the poor fighter who's still going to get taken to the cleaners in 3e.

If the PCs to go over-under or otherwise approach in an unconventional way, I guess you get to improvise a skill challenge. Which is not, reputedly, easy.

Indeed. It is so not easy that in my third session of DMing D&D ever, the PCs came up with a slightly insane plan involving hiding a young dragon in a fake plague cart to transport it across the city. I took a mouthful of my drink to buy time - and by the time I'd swallowed I had the skill challenge scetched out firmly enough in my head to be able to run it without trouble (and no, I didn't turn it into a dice rolling fest or ever mention the words "skill challenge").

Once you've grasped what they are good for, skill challenges are easy to improvise with and a superb tool to use to improvise for off the wall PC plans. The guidance for doing this is, alas, poor.

Is it any better, in fact, than a first edition DM saying, "Uh, okay, roll a d20 under your Dex to cross the platform?"

That's not a skill challenge. That's an acrobatics check in 4e and a balance check in 3e.

A skill challenge on the same bridge would be "As they approach the narrow and rickety walkway you crossed on the way in, the hostages you rescued huddle together in terror, both convinced they'll fall if they try to cross it." It's a short scene in its own right, not a simple pass/fail check.

At some points I am undoubtedly lowballing 4e's capabilities,

You're going beyond that and into outright denying obvious ones. As for instance in the skills example above where 4e has exactly the same skills as 3e (bar a rename) and somehow you think this makes 3e better able to deal with things.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If you guys are talkin' about how different editions would handle non combat challenges, might I suggest takin' a look at my Ah! What Edition to use thread? Promoting your own old thread may be lame but I think it really is relevant to the situation. All though 3.5 got more votes then 4th Edition, many of the posts supported not using any rules all and just improving everything.

3.5 got more votes than 4e on that single thread because you were pitching it as a 3.5 scenario. "Experts" do not exist in 4e. And 4e isn't great for PVP. Also the type of game you'd get would be different in the two editions; 3e really has the "get a bigger hammer" magic wars in a way 4e simply doesn't - which IMO makes 4e a better game most of the time. But you also explicitely set all the PCs as spellcasters which levelled the playing field. If instead of sorceress vs artificer you'd set sorceress vs rogue the answer might well have been very different.

Also I notice that you chose a biassed sample; that was your fourth thread on which edition to use and the only one in which you posed it in edition specific terms. In all the ones where your scenario was edition neutral, 4e beat 3e. It simply lost to 3e at a 3e-specific scenario.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...top-being-wizards-coasts-target-audience.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...65-what-edition-use-ii-electirc-booagloo.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/273011-what-edition-use-3-a.html

 

[wedgeski]

Ok, so I think I'm talking to myself a bit there. What am I trying to say that is worth saying? Here it is: I would never point to 4e and say, "Don't do this." 4e does some things really well. But I don't think it was a good idea to point to 4e and say, "This is the new D&D." Plenty of people like it, but enough rejected the opportunity to play the new D&D that it can be said, definitively, that the new D&D was not well-received. All previous editions of D&D have largely eclipsed their preceding versions. Someone is welcome to say, "By definition, 4e is the new D&D." But if you say, "4e is sufficiently D&D to provide a superior replacement experience for previous versions of D&D," the numbers say you are mistaken. 4e is not sufficiently D&D, not from a creative standpoint, nor a financial viewpoint. It did not capture its audience, it did not successfully compete with the D&D already being played.

I think this is a fair set of statements but with one caveat: 4E was born into a very different landscape than 3E, one where the OGL provided a certain talented and enterprising company the chance to essentially fork D&D into an ongoing and supported version which gave those who had bought-in to 3E the opportunity to continue playing what they love. So, 4E may not be "sufficiently D&D" to a lot of people, but the fact that something that was already "sufficiently D&D" continues to be made will certainly have a major impact on things.

 

[Imaro]

This is an interesting point.

In my view the previous editions weren't Swiss army knives, but also had a focus. Look, for example, at the advice for players in the last section of the 1st ed AD&D PHB. Not a game about basket-weaving. A game about operational play. If you don't actually play out your dungeon-scouting in 1st ed, you're not playing the game that Gygax is talking about.

Or at the list of sample scenarios in the Moldvay Basic rulebook. Also not a game about basket-weaving, but similar in some ways to Gygax's AD&D although a bit more light-hearted.

On the other hand, earlier editions of D&D don't particularly support hero-questing play - that is, a game in which the heroes travel back into mythic history in order to rewrite myth and therefore change the world - because (i) the structure of the planes tends to be treated as fixed independently of the gods, (ii) the gods tend to be treated as unkillable, (iii) the history of the gameworld is not generally presented as having a mythic aspect, and (iv) there are other reasons as well, of a more mechaincal nature, that can be elaborated if desired.

I know not everyone agrees with me on this. Some people think that a simulationist ruleset can be plugged into any world. But that is not my experience. In my experience, a simulationist ruleset tends to create its own pressure to prioritise some, and subordinate other, aspects of the gameworld in the course of play.

I think AD&D 1E and B/X are just as focused as 4E is. Different focus, but still.

edit: Scooped by pemerton!

Wow, step away rom this thread for a few hours and it'll get away from you...

I don't think anywhere that I said the earlier editions didn't have a focus at all, however I disagree that earlier editions were as focused on a particular style of play (and as exclusionary to others) in both tone and mechanics as 4e... especially with the B/X transition to BECMI and the supplements for AD&D 1st edition are taken into account. You cannot at this point in time with the multitude of sourcebooks and Dragon/Dungeon for 4e in all fairness regulate comparisons to corebooks only. In those previous editions, there are rules and/or advice for everything from hiring laborers and henchmen to constructing strongholds, traveling to other dimensions (even other game systems), owning land, non-combat monsters, morale, etc. much of which (even this far into it's life cycle and with so much supplemental material published) 4e either lacks officially or leaves up in the air for the DM to create. YMMV of course.

SIDE NOTE: [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]: I'm not arguing that previous editions included every possible playstyle... but that they were more accomodating and open to a wider variety. I mean i I'm not mistaken (and I may very well be) things such as time travel and dimensional travel to other worlds were at least mentioned and given rules/advice for in AD&D. Also the setting (Planescape) was based on the premise that the very multiverse could be shaped with belief. Not exactly hero-questing (and probably not the best implementation but still a good first try IMO) but still the earlier editons seem to, IMO, have a much wider, wilder and encompasing blanket than what is currently offered.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Ok, so I think I'm talking to myself a bit there. What am I trying to say that is worth saying? Here it is: I would never point to 4e and say, "Don't do this." 4e does some things really well. But I don't think it was a good idea to point to 4e and say, "This is the new D&D." Plenty of people like it, but enough rejected the opportunity to play the new D&D that it can be said, definitively, that the new D&D was not well-received. All previous editions of D&D have largely eclipsed their preceding versions. Someone is welcome to say, "By definition, 4e is the new D&D." But if you say, "4e is sufficiently D&D to provide a superior replacement experience for previous versions of D&D," the numbers say you are mistaken. 4e is not sufficiently D&D, not from a creative standpoint, nor a financial viewpoint. It did not capture its audience, it did not successfully compete with the D&D already being played.

I'm not sure that's 100% true though. 2e and 1e saw a split that, at least anecdotally, was just as wide as 3e to 4e. I've seen estimates as high as 50% of groups not making the switch over. And there are many, many examples of people talking about how they skipped over 2e to start again with 3e.

The problem I see is that you mention "numbers" yet there aren't any. We have no idea how many current 4e gamers there are compared to how many 3e gamers there are. None. All of it is gut feeling and Magic Eight Ball guesswork.

The last EN World polls I saw on the changeover, and it's been some time since I saw one, had 3e players moving over to 4e at about 50% (ish). Is that really a failure to capture the audience? What about new gamers coming in? I haven't seen any numbers on that, other than to note that most people seem to be having pretty good responses with the Encounters game days at the FLGS.

Wheeling this back to the OP (sort of), could 4e have been more popular? Sure it could have. But, just because it wasn't overwhelmingly popular, doesn't mean that it didn't "successfully compete with the D&D already being played."