D&D 5E Changes in Interpretation

[Emerikol]

Yes and no though. I don't think I ever saw a pre-3e group that came close to playing D&D "by the book". House rules abounded and it was pretty much expected, at least IME, that any book I bought was going to have to be pretty heavily vetted before it saw play.

I really only played 3e a lot but I didn't houserule much. As DM I require ALL books from ANY edition be vetted beyond the first three. It's the job of the DM to keep an eye on his campaign and not let something in that wrecks it.

I am in the camp of those who felt the 4e design team was insulting but not because of the gnome video. I think that team basically said - we know how to play and the way you've been playing is #badwrongfun . I think if they were going to release a game that was so radically different from previous editions they should have renamed it or at minimum continued support of the previous edition. Thats how I see it.

 

[D'karr]

Thats how I see it.

Interestingly enough, I disagree. That's how I see it.





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[pemerton]

I really only played 3e a lot

<snip>

I think if they were going to release a game that was so radically different from previous editions

Which is it - are you comparing to 3E, or to D&D as a whole. 3E is not uniquely representative of all and everything that has been D&D.

 

[The Shadow]

Which is it - are you comparing to 3E, or to D&D as a whole. 3E is not uniquely representative of all and everything that has been D&D.

I don't think it's possible to escape the fact that 4e is quite different from every edition that came before - both for good and for ill. Some of the changes I like, some I don't; but it's still different.

And yes, I do have a broad base of experience outside of 3e, if such be needed.

 

[Iosue]

On one hand, I've felt that there's no magic bullet, no marketing pancea that WotC can turn to that will make people say, "WotC marketed that really well." Basically, if someone is more or less positive regarding edition change, they'll read things in a positive light. If they're negative towards the idea of a new edition, anything WotC says will be greeted with suspicion or offense. And of course, what mollifies one segment will incite another. This was really brought home to me reading the reactions to the Penny Arcade 5e podcast. For years, WotC's been taking hits for essentially saying, "The game you've been playing is bad and broken" or otherwise poormouthing the old edition. In the podcast, Mearls tells Gabe, "4e's a great game, and if it's giving you exactly what you want, and you don't find anything interesting in the new edition, by all means, keep playing 4e." I thought it was a great thing to say: it didn't badmouth 4e, it acknowledged that it was a good and popular game, and seemed wholly outside the usual, "down with the old edition, up with the new edition!" type attitude that WotC has had in the past.

But man, that comment incensed the 4e guys in another forum. They were saying, "What, you're not even going to try selling the game to us? Give us a reason to care! What a bunch of crap!"

It's like -
1. Talk about an old edition and what it did right → "I'll believe it when I see it." (with added possibility of pissing fans of an even older edition OR pissing off fans of a newer edition for "going backward in game design".
2. Talk about a problem in the previous edition, and how the new edition will fix it → Badmouthing the old edition.
3. Diplomatically not mention the old edition → "Why aren't they mentioning the old edition? Why are they ignoring all the goodness that was in it?

Personally, I'm wholly unsympathetic to 3e claims of being insulted in the 4e marketing, as well as 4e claims to being insulted by the run up to the next edition. Those aren't insults; they are just comparing and contrasting to emphasize what they feel are the improvements in the new edition. There's really no other way to market a new edition. The only group I have sympathy for are the 2e folks. They really got the shaft. When the company is making up T-shirts putting down the old edition, now THAT'S insulting.

But on the other hand, while I feel sympathy for WotC because people take innocuous comments in the worst possible light, I can't help but feel WotC brings it on themselves. For some reason, they have this thing for re-inventing D&D. From 1974 to 2000, there was a continuity to D&D throughout the editions. Sure there are differences, but put a LBB player at a table with 2e, and he's basically going to fit in. The 1e player and the BECMI player are going to have a common lexicon. The editions are not all the same, but they're not that different. B2 was written for Holmes Basic, and is perfectly compatible as is with 2e.

But it seems like every new WotC edition is a whole paradigm shift. There's virtually no compatibility from edition to edition. The poor folks here at EN World have to write two distinct versions of an AP, and I doubt either will be compatible with 5e. When you do that, you force your hand. The only real way you can market it is to play up the differences from the old edition.

Contrast with 2nd Edition, where the drive of the marketing was "Don't worry! The game hasn't really changed!" WotC needs to get off the merry-go-round, and make it so that future editions maintain compatibility. It should really be along the lines of 1e to 2e, Holmes to Moldvay to Mentzer. A few refinements, some changes in presentation, but not a whole new rule set and paradigm to learn. When they do that, they'll find the marketing side of things a lot easier.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Something I've noticed for some time now, is a very, very strong sense that people are no longer willing to apply any sort of personal interpretation to the rules. That if something is written in the game in a certain way, that way must absolutely be followed, must never be deviated from and must never be given a moment's introspection on how to make it work

Is this what people took from 3e? I know that the 3e discussions frequently focused on RAW, but, even then, there was usually a sense of "Well, here's what the RAW says, but..." .

While /some/ of us voiced that attitude - that RAW was at most a starting point - it was far from prevalent in the 3e era. 'RAW' became sacred, "that would be a house rule" became a rude dismissal. Compared to the attitude of the (admittedly, much less connected) community in the first decade or two of the game's history, it's a stunning about-face. In the 1e DMG, EGG made it very clear that it was the DM's perogative to change rules. The role of DM, itself, was an outgrowth of the wargaming 'judge' who's job was to make impartial rulings and interpretations in a more adversarial environment. Interpreting rules was unquestionable the role of the DM, and interpreting them for the 'good' of the game experience was an ideal most better DMs presumably aspired to.

3e changed all that. My theory is that the impetus was 3e's intentional 'rewards for system mastery' (designed into the game according to Monte Cook in 'Ivory Tower Design'). Those rewards were built into the system, often in ways that a 'good' old-school DM might be inclined to dis-allow as imbalancing. To get those rewards, system-masters would have to insist on sticking to the system, as written, no interpretations to restore balance - because beating the balanced base-line was the point of the system-mastery meta-game.

4e muted the phenomenon, but did nothing to eliminate it. Heck, I suppose it might even have turned it on its head, making RAW (and frequent 'updates' thereof) a defense against powergaming.

I suspect 5e, with it's promise of voluminous advice to the DM, and rules-lite philosophy may intend to put that particular genie back in the bottle. I don't think it's likely they can succeed, but I'd be delighted if they were to. Be sure to invoke Solmon's name when you seal that puppy back up.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think it's possible to escape the fact that 4e is quite different from every edition that came before - both for good and for ill. Some of the changes I like, some I don't; but it's still different.

And yes, I do have a broad base of experience outside of 3e, if such be needed.

See, this is where I kind of get bogged down.

Mechanically, 4e is far closer to 3e than 3e is to, say, Basic/Expert D&D. It's actually probably closer, purely mechanically, than 3e is to 2e.

Note, the flavor changes are bloody huge and you'll get no disagreement from me here on that. But, that being said, you can point to a LOT of the flavor of 4e being informed by Basic/Expert and 1e D&D. The idea that artifacts are weird and wonderous, rather than just really powerful magic items that PC's can't make, for example. Disconnecting the rules for PC construction from NPC construction is purely pre-3e D&D. That sort of thing.

So, I really do have an issue with people talking about how different 4e really is.

I mean, you can sit a 3e player down at a 4e table, hand him a character sheet and he'll be able to read the character sheet and understand most of it. About the only difference from the player's perspective is encounter and daily powers. That's the only mechanical difference.

If you sit a 2e player down at a 3e table, hand him a character sheet, he can't even begin to parse the sheet. Stats are handled entirely differently, saving throws are entirely reworked, classes and levels work differently, everything on that sheet is different. Never mind that as soon as combat starts, the 2e player would have zero idea how gridded combat works. The 3e player should immediately understand how 4e combat works. The rules are largely the same.

I think one of the biggest differences though is in the voice of the books. 3e core books were as "voiceless" as possible. They presumed that you already knew how to run a game and generally handed you lots of intricate detail, but, very little advice. 4e presumed you didn't know how to run a game and, like 1e, had a very strong voice on how to run a successful game.

I think that strong voice is primarily what makes people grind their teeth.

 

[Victim]

Contrast with 2nd Edition, where the drive of the marketing was "Don't worry! The game hasn't really changed!" WotC needs to get off the merry-go-round, and make it so that future editions maintain compatibility. It should really be along the lines of 1e to 2e, Holmes to Moldvay to Mentzer. A few refinements, some changes in presentation, but not a whole new rule set and paradigm to learn. When they do that, they'll find the marketing side of things a lot easier.

Really? I think they'd find "pay for some errata and formatting" to require at least as much marketing as their current approach. You know, since with the Internet people can download minor changes for free, versus buying a whole new book or magazine.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The 3e player should immediately understand how 4e combat works. The rules are largely the same.

This is not my experience in play. Nor is it the experience of others I see describing why they left 4e.

I think that strong voice is primarily what makes people grind their teeth.

This also is not my experience; it is one gripe among many about the rules, which were presented with a strong voice because they were so vastly different in terms of how familiar concepts were redeployed, in comparison to 3e (and 1e for that matter).

 

[pemerton]

I don't think it's possible to escape the fact that 4e is quite different from every edition that came before - both for good and for ill. Some of the changes I like, some I don't; but it's still different.

D&D has in my view always had obvious metagame and/or Fortune-in-the-Middle mechanics: hit points (unless interpreted as "meat"), an action economy, turn-by-turn initiative, saving throws (except in 3E, where they are mostly process simulation), XP, etc.

4e adds a refinement to the hit point mechanic - the healing surge - which is a pacing mechanic (both for pacing combat resolution and the activity/rest cycle) and a scene-framing mechanic (PCs generally begin each combat the same mechanical distance from death - this also feeds into the pacing). And it adds a refinement to the action economy - namely, encounter and daily powers for all classes.

These features of 4e, in my view, make it very hard to play in a process-simulation fashion, but also (in my view) not much harder than playing AD&D as process-simulation. I'm from the school that regards the differences between classic D&D and 3E as being comparable, in their implications for gameplay, to the differences between 3E and 4e.

But I don't think the mechanics are all there is to D&D. I've posted about this twice on recent threads; now for a third time:

D&D has always had two aspects: its story elements, and its mechanical elements. For about 20 years I abandoned the mechanical elements, because they were not up to the task of supporting and delivering the story elements. 4e brought me back to D&D's mechanics, because finally they were able to deliver on the story elements that I had been using for those nearly 20 years. Here is how I put it on another recent thread:

In the 20-odd years that I GMed Rolemaster, I used two D&D campaign settings - Greyhawk and Kara-Tur - and numerous D&D modules - Emirates of Ylaruam, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, the Slavers, Tomb of Horrors, Bastion of Broken Souls, mutiple 2nd-ed Greyhawk modules, multiple 1st-ed and 2nd-ed Oriental Adventures modules, plus any number of D&D vignettes from various sources (like the single-card scenarios in the Greyhawk City boxed set, and Tales from the Infinte Staircase). I also converted any number of monsters from the AD&D and 3E Monster Manuals to Rolemaster, and used Deities & Demigods and Manuals of the Planes from multiple editions to help build my pantheons and cosmologies.

<snip>

I think of myself as someone who loves D&D - look at all the D&D story elements I've been using for 20 years! It was just that the D&D mechanics could never deliver me the promise of those story elements - until 4e.

I don't see that you have any greater claim on what D&D is, and might or should be, than I do.

I particularly want to reiterate that last line. Those who don't like 4e don't have any monopoly over the question of what D&D really is, or whether 4e was true to it or departed from it. For me, 4e is mechanically truer to those D&D story elements than any earlier version of the D&D system.