4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[S'mon]

WotC REALLY needed a new PHB/DMG/MM.

I think a reissued PHB with errata and improved presentation would have helped a lot. DM's side stuff is less important, but yes they could certainly have reissued at least the MM with errata, post-MM3 damage, and stick errata'd DMG monster building rules in the back - maybe treasure tables too (with a sample of suggested magic items), for convenience. But Essentials Monster Vault was arguably close enough.

I get the impression WoTC overprinted the original 4e 2008 PHB/MM/DMG and didn't want to cannibalise sales - but that's stupid TSR-era thinking, with a chunk of sunk-cost-fallacy. My new 4e players are still buying 2008 4e PHBs, but if WoTC had really wanted and expected 4e to last for a decade (as it says in my 4e PHB - see box on page 7!), that Ten Year Reich really needed a firmer foundation, and a redone PHB could have accomplished that.

 

[S'mon]

I still hold onto my hypothesis that two (likely real) things hurt D&D 4e more than anything else:

1) Incoherency within the editorial team or process. Incoherency between the editorial teams' understanding of the 4e vision and the game designers' actual vision.

2) Either too many cooks in the kitchen of the design team or the unwillingness (fear?) to explicitly canvass design intent at initial release in the summer of 2008.

A simple look at PHB1, DMG1 and DMG2 (released only 15 months after the initial release of the system) reveals all kinds of inconsistencies.

In PHB1, on page 9 and 10, you have the "How Do You Play" section which is obviously meant to introduce new players to standard operating procedures and reinforce the same to tenured players. Here it tells you to immerse and be your character (advocating Actor Stance) and then goes on to canvass...

Yep, I've just been rereading the start of my 4e PHB ahead of meeting a bunch of newbie players for a new Beginners campaign starting tonight, to get an idea of what the one rulebook most of them will have just bought will have been telling them, and I was really struck by exactly what you're saying here.

 

[S'mon]

The occasionally more interesting combats were far too little benefit compared to my GM's sudden inability to suss together how all of these various indie RPG parts fit together into the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game (to say nothing of the "dissociative" powers effects poking out all over the place).

Heh, I wonder how often the players in my first 4e campaign felt like that! [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] might have some insight, since he played in much of it. It wasn't a total disaster but in hindsight it was definitely a 'learning experience'.

 

[Manbearcat]

Which is probably why my four total experiences with 4e were monumentally frustrating, to the point that I didn't even care to "sort out" what was actually going on "behind the curtain" with the rules.

Yep, I've just been rereading the start of my 4e PHB ahead of meeting a bunch of newbie players for a new Beginners campaign starting tonight, to get an idea of what the one rulebook most of them will have just bought will have been telling them, and I was really struck by exactly what you're saying here.

Heh, I wonder how often the players in my first 4e campaign felt like that!

There are so many things I wish they would have written about that would have clued the audience into the design intent and functionality of the ruleset. Instead there is a decent bit of pagecount that is just vacillating, D&D orthodox claptrap. So many things that I've written about are things that I would never have had to write about or debrief some of my new and some of my tenured (which had more problems than the new) players on if only it was thoroughly covered in those initial texts. Things as simple as the metagame comprehension aids for the intent and functionality of (i) martial healing and forced movement (which I've written and spoken far too much about), (ii) defender mechanisms, (iii) narrative co-authorship-empowering PC resources from alternative stances, (iv) skill challenge stakes/composition/pressure and decision-points/ultimate resolutions, (v) expanded minion (minion use is decently supported...but could use more) and swarm utilization, (vi) extra encounter tools (Rituals, Condition Track, Healing Surge attrition - again, kinda outlined but needs more, specifically from the metagame side). Can you imagine how helpful it would have been for a great many players/DMs to have had serious, honest, and thorough essays on the 4e metagame and tutorials on utilization?

Again, I don't know why that happened (1 or 2 is my guess...likely mostly 1 as I've seen uncomprehending editors and time crunch/page count crunch utterly crush a products theme/vision) but I would love to have an alternate world with a rewrite done to those books and see how the edition fared in that alternate world.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I still hold onto my hypothesis that two (likely real) things hurt D&D 4e more than anything else:

1) Incoherency within the editorial team or process. Incoherency between the editorial teams' understanding of the 4e vision and the game designers' actual vision.

2) Either too many cooks in the kitchen of the design team or the unwillingness (fear?) to explicitly canvass design intent at initial release in the summer of 2008.

A simple look at PHB1, DMG1 and DMG2 (released only 15 months after the initial release of the system) reveals all kinds of inconsistencies.

In PHB1, on page 9 and 10, you have the "How Do You Play" section which is obviously meant to introduce new players to standard operating procedures and reinforce the same to tenured players. Here it tells you to immerse and be your character (advocating Actor Stance) and then goes on to canvass:

Combat Encounters: Standard, neutral text which span all editions.

Noncombat Encounters: Here we get reinforcement of classic D&D play; Deadly traps, difficult puzzles, other obstacles, etc. Sometimes you'll use character skills, clever use of magic, your own wits (puzzles). Social interactions; persuade, bargain, obtain info from DM controlled sources etc.

Exploration, Taking Your Turn and Example of Play: Here we REALLY, REALLY get classic, pulp D&D play promoted and illustrated as the default. Everything you can think of in classic play is nailed down here from DM rulings (DM having the final say), classic dungeon-crawling and open world, sand-boxing; Move down hallways, following passages, listening at doors, checking doors/chests for locks/traps, break down doors, search for treasure, explore for pulling levers, pushing statues, moving furnishings, picking locks, jury-rigging traps, etc, etc. It even promotes the classic mundane versus powerful magic paradigm; "can't punch through 3-inch thick iron doors with your bare hands - not unless you have powerful magic to help you out!" And then we have the, limited (obviously introductory stuff like we did when we were kids) very pulpy example of exploratory play.

All of this instruction really, really looks to be aimed at introducing extremely novice players (very young kids like when many of us started) to classic D&D exploratory play. I wonder if this is yet another reason why many felt turned off and felt condescended to/patronized. Perhaps the at the editorial meetings, they felt the best way forward was to write to the extremely novice, young players...and that was the editorial voice they used for much of the introductory text of the initial books.

Then you have an entire book of classes filled with, primarily, closed-scene (encounters), protagonist powers. These powers span all manner of stance; from Actor (which was tacitly and implicitly advocated in the How Do You Play and Making Characters sections - "your avatar" or "you") to Author to Director. We then get Rituals and its rules, which any class can take, which expressley are "extra-encounter" exploratory/interaction play-driven.


Then we get DMG 1 which is all over the place in editorial tone and direction. Its tone modulates from the "FUN!" section whereby it attempts to respect all playstyles and say there is no such thing as "badwrongfun", whatever you and your players agree on is fun is...well...fun...so do that! Then it goes on to advocate classic D&D exploratory play. Then it goes on to tell you to to "Get to the fun!" and gloss over the mundane, skip boring "sand-boxesque" details and get to the heroic action. And then it goes back to trying to modulate the tone and be a proponent of classic D&D interests when it circles the wagons of the classic D&D cultural meme (from 2e onward) and ACTUALLY SAY METAGAMING IS SUBVERSIVE (p15)...4E...averse to the metagame? What? Then it goes on to equivocate in championing classically Indie interests that are metagame friendly in the conflict resolution, scene-framing tool of Skill Challenges (which anyone who has any Indie-Gaming experience immediately knew what this was). Except it does it with just enough noncommittal, nebulous instruction to confuse many (new and old) users into not fully getting the why and how.

Then we get lots of Dungeon material clarifying Skill Challenge whys and hows (failing forward, etc) and its clear Indie roots and whys and hows.

Then we get the DMG2 with Laws. This was an extraordinarily focused (design vision and editorial) book. It was wonderfully elegant, savvy and honest. It fully discloses the metagame friendly, scene-framing power of 4e from collective storytelling and tangible, drama rewards to incentivize it, to branching, to cooperative arcs and world-building, how to compose vignettes and closed scenes, most of the whys and hows of Skill Challenges (from stakes to composition to failing forward to framing the scene and preparing and setting ultimate outcomes). The entire book unabashedly, explicitly advocated a Narrative creative agenda of PC protagonism and co-authorship of the fiction with the players.


To this day, I still don't know if it was 1 or 2 or both. None of it mattered to me because I knew the product instantly from the Gamist/Narrativist Creative Agenda at its core framework of PC protagonism, fiction co-authorship, metagame friendliness, and scene-framing default playstyle. It was quite clear looking at the meat and potatoes of the system. However, the PHB1 and DMG1 content (resolution tools, PC resources, advice and the editorializing) was absolutely all over the place. Left hand; I'd like you to meet the Right Hand.


All of that being said. I still hold that you absolutely can, 100 % use the ruleset to reproduce classic D&D. You just have to be finicky in power selection and do a few things slightly differently than the default playstyle suggests...which is pretty much the case for every table in the history of D&D preceding 4e...but somehow 4e doesn't get that same "hey, drift it to meet your tastes" treatment.

I'm not sure most people are all that hung up on questions of whether or not a game is pushing one agenda or another. I think it is all very much simpler. There are a LOT of people who want their version of D&D and have zero tolerance for mechanics, tone, or ANYTHING that isn't exactly that thing. I think the vast majority of the D&D community ossified into a groove they have no desire to get out of decades ago. 3.x served well-enough because for the most part if you mostly ignore the later books and don't MC too excessively you can basically play something that if you squint a tiny bit is pretty much 2e, which in turn is pretty much 1e, and thus not SUPER different from Basic etc. Different in some details, but not enough to push people out of their groove. Of course there are some folks that 3.x was too much for too, but far less.

D&D is a community of mostly long-time players in their 30's and up with no desire to play anything new, at least when it comes to D&D. That's flat out all their is to it. 4e is enough different that it invoked the wrath of the "grognards", which is to say practically the whole D&D community these days, even if they seem unable to notice it in themselves.

You're right, nobody gave 4e a break, and few tried to really figure out how to use it. Heck, barely anyone at WotC even bothered, which was why we got crap for support material. Honestly, looking at the monstrosity that DDN is, I think D&D is dead. Its going to lurch back into its OSR cave and it will abide their for decades to come, but I think DDN will linger as a curiosity. PF will remain as the most liberal incarnation, but I think Paizo is going to be stuck in a few years just like WotC is stuck now.

Luckily there are still many of us who will simply continue playing 4e, it is very far from dead. I keep getting asked to start new 4e campaigns all the time and I could basically care less what the games "agenda" is. Its an FRPG and we just play it, we don't ask questions

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think a reissued PHB with errata and improved presentation would have helped a lot. DM's side stuff is less important, but yes they could certainly have reissued at least the MM with errata, post-MM3 damage, and stick errata'd DMG monster building rules in the back - maybe treasure tables too (with a sample of suggested magic items), for convenience. But Essentials Monster Vault was arguably close enough.

I get the impression WoTC overprinted the original 4e 2008 PHB/MM/DMG and didn't want to cannibalise sales - but that's stupid TSR-era thinking, with a chunk of sunk-cost-fallacy. My new 4e players are still buying 2008 4e PHBs, but if WoTC had really wanted and expected 4e to last for a decade (as it says in my 4e PHB - see box on page 7!), that Ten Year Reich really needed a firmer foundation, and a redone PHB could have accomplished that.

Well, from what I understand the core books were the best sellers EVER. There was a lot of pent up desire for a new edition obviously. They reprinted at least the PHB1 twice after the first run, and yeah, I get the feeling they overshot on that last print run a bunch. It seemed like Essentials was partly a "How can we revise the game without actually technically scrapping our core book inventory?" move.

I think Essentials was a horrible mistake. I like a lot of the content, but the organization was BAD, the redundancy was irritating, and the whole thing totally confused anyone coming into the game for the first time. They'd have been MUCH better off issuing a "4.5" revision of the core books. Drop out a giant errata to the 4.0 books on DDI at the same time and just eat the bullet. It would have made the whole product line much easier to market. Honestly it might even have been worth doing a deep enough cleanup of the core mechanics to break compatibility while keeping things mostly the same. I dunno.

 

[Quickleaf]

D&D is a community of mostly long-time players in their 30's and up with no desire to play anything new, at least when it comes to D&D. That's flat out all their is to it. 4e is enough different that it invoked the wrath of the "grognards", which is to say practically the whole D&D community these days, even if they seem unable to notice it in themselves.

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]
Really? Do you think most of us 30-something D&D players are so set in our ways?

Obviously my n=1, but our group is mostly in the 30-36 age range (with one in his late 20's), and we like 4e just fine. We have diverse tastes, and are most content with a well-rounded game that appeals to everyone: intrigue, dungeon-crawling, character drama, epic boss fights, solving mysteries/puzzles, all in equal measure. Maybe we're the outlier to the norm?

 

[JeffB]

Yeah I don't know. But I am in my 40s, so....Started with the Brown Books in 77. Still use them and love them. Like 4E better than 3.x and PF. Have run 3.X, 4E, PF(BB), C&C and OD&D/S&W Comp over the past year and a half (along with a handful of 5E playtest sessions). Fave version of the game is Moldvay Cook Marsh B/X and using what I need from the LBBs.

If its good its good. If it fits my classic (cliche?)old school style, is table fast, and doesn't require lots of homework and essays as the game approaches 5th level and above It works for me. I really dig 4E. My initial 4E group back in 08/09 did not. I even made up O.A.F and the Rouseketeers, I like(d) it so much. Converted recent OD&D campaign (pre ToT FR) to 4E and just bought most of the Essentials stuff with XMAS gift cards to use. Shame that WOTC did not publish Essentials in a 3 HC book format to begin with, I think 4E would have fared much better. I have eliminated the grid because none of us like it, and thus eliminated/re wrote powers/bits that rely on grid. Game plays like Moldvay/Cook/Marsh on Steroids (especially as its just HotFL for races and classes). Things are just more Beefy now (like Strongbad's arm) than they were in the 70s/Early 80s. We have lots of fun. Feels plenty like D&D to me. In some ways far moreso than 3/PF, 2E or even AD&D ever did.

:shrug:

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred
Really? Do you think most of us 30-something D&D players are so set in our ways?

Obviously my n=1, but our group is mostly in the 30-36 age range (with one in his late 20's), and we like 4e just fine. We have diverse tastes, and are most content with a well-rounded game that appeals to everyone: intrigue, dungeon-crawling, character drama, epic boss fights, solving mysteries/puzzles, all in equal measure. Maybe we're the outlier to the norm?

I think you and I and [MENTION=518]JeffB[/MENTION] and etc are all probably at least somewhat in the same boat. We're posting in this thread, so we have some interest in 4e. Obviously MY group at least (several of them) are OK with 4e. They aren't all burningly enthused about it, but they obviously enjoy playing. I have players in their 30's and 40's. Some of us started out way back in the mid 70's. Clearly we're not too hung up on tradition. OTOH I can completely understand where someone is coming from who says "Hey! D&D is THIS game/sort of game, if I want something else I'll buy some other game." etc. I think, from what I read and what people tell me that the majority of players just aren't that interested in different rules. They don't really care about any theories about RPGs, they just want to pick up basically recognizably the game they played when they were 15 and play it some more. There are widely varying degrees to which they'll tolerate some level of differences, 3.5 or PF are fine with some, others want nothing but OD&D ala '74. 4e just doesn't fit into that world scheme at all.

 

[Remathilis]

2012 was almost ineitable from the production model of 4e. Basically they ran out of stuff to publish for it; WotC publish mostly crunch and there's very little to do under the 4e paradigm that the crunch isn't out there for either in a book or in Dragon. (It's my view that 4e needs precisely four more books; the Birthright setting, the Spelljammer setting, a Spelljammer Monster Manual, and an Epic Level handbook. All four products are ... niche. There's also an Unearthed Arcana, Maths, and Hacks book). Now they could have tried TSR-style shovelware, but one of the attractive things about 4e books is that almost without exception they are high quality and add significantly to the game.

The production model that says there's only so many powers/magic items books that can be put out and around the time PHB3 had plant-men, archer-priests and sentient crystal, the well had been tapped dry too quick?

4e had a lot of potential material, but I'd say 90% of it would have been fluff, and that didn't sell too well. For every copy of Manual of the Planes that sold, 10 copies of Heroes of the Elemental Chaos sold. The Char-builder was flooded with feats, powers, rituals and magic items. There was still things that could have sold, but I wager they wer setting-based (atop the ones you mentioned, why not a Sigil book? A Ravenloft one? More Realms and Eberron stuff?)

This would be a definition of all I am unfamilliar with. It doesn't include either @Dice4Hire or @TonyVargas for instance. And you aren't a 4e fan - the reception to Essentials was ... about as mixed as the reception to the book of Weaboo Fitan Majik.

When Essentials was released, I heard a vocal minority that proclaimed It was a betrayal to 4e's design (ADEU classes, etc). However, I was generally under the impression Essentials was well received and even welcomed for its revisions. Color me genuinely surprised that Essentials was hated by the 4e community.

And to use an analogy, 3.5 had the brilliant and contraversial Tome of Battle: The Book of 9 Swords. This works with the rest of 3.5 - but what do you think that the reaction of the fanbase would have been to the idea that every single subsequent book should be in the style of the Tome of Battle? Having something there as an option is completely different from making it the dominant paradigm.

Probably on par with the fanbases reaction to 4e?

I'm pretty sure you don't need the RC for anything. It's just a useful reference guide.

Again, not having bought it; I was under the assumption the RC had the rules, while the Player books only had races, classes, skills, feats and powers. You needed the RC to run combat, for example.

Given that the Bo9S was not a trial balloon for 4e, this logic doesn't hold. What the Bo9S was was the salvageable parts of Orcus - a planned 4e they worked on for 10 months before deciding it was horrible and starting almost entirely from scratch, meaning 4e was developed in 14 months rather than the 24 it was allocated. The Bo9S was put out rather than let Orcus go entirely to waste.

Player's Option was a trial balloon for 3e. The best stuff from PO reappeared in 3e. The bad stuff didn't. I view Bo9S in the same light; a proof of concept that shows there was room for martial powers.

From a sales point, DDI is worth a lot making the whole thing profitable by taking in a lot of money for very low overheads. Hell, the DDI subscribers now are bankrolling the DDN development team. Because 4e has DDI it has a guaranteed and predictable income meaning we don't have the TSR or 3.X problem of warehouses full of books that take up space and have sunk costs but don't sell. It (and the comparable Pathfinder subscription model) is much healthier for a company than anything either 3.X or Lorraine Williams' TSR managed. Gleemax? A murder/suicide by the lead developer will cause problems. Although that's no excuse for the VTT never appearing.

Granted, DDi saves WotC the cost of printing many books (including a few apparently finished). I think saying 3e is responsible for google seaches to drop is akin to saying 4e caused D&D Minis to go belly up. Correlation doesn't imply causation.