4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Imaro]

While I understand your point, D&Ds historical strength was its adaptabililty to different playstyles.

Yep, I agree with this... D&D was a "general" tool which could be, without too much effort, adapted for different playstyles.

I don't think anyone can claim that, by design, D&D is more simulationist than GURPS or Runequest. But then, no-one can claim that it is, by design, more narratavist than HeroWars or Burning Wheel. Nor that, by design, it is more gamist than Paranoia or Tunnels and Trolls. In 30 years I've never been aware of D&D being the poster child for any specific playstyle, only for the hobby as a whole.

I agree again. I have noticed that often on these boards the claim of 3e being simulationist is often couched in extreme terms (by proponents of 4e) where it is an all or nothing thing... but if you refer back to your first point of adaptability, it wouldn't make sense if 3e or any edition of D&D was a pure simulationist game. The thing i find fuinny is that 4e isn't purein a gamist, narrativist or simulationist sense either... I mean if you want any of these things there are better games out there for it than 4e, but it doesn't stop many of the fans of 4e from claiming that 4e is (for the most part) of a narrativist bent and preferring it to games that do narrativist play much better.

I liked 4e. But I guess I saw in it a game I wanted to play. I'd hardly played 2nd or 3rd ed so I wasn't trying to use it to recreate previous editions, or relive the AD&D of my youth. I played it for what I saw it as - a supers game with a fantasy skin. It's very good at what it does, but I suspect it's harder to drift than previous iterations.

I think the two sentences I emphasized are very telling. Throughout all the marketing fans of earlier editions were told that the game was the same... but now we can very clearly see that it is not, and that it in fact promotes and runs best under a specific playstyle and with pretty specific assumptions that weren't really layed out or explained well in the first 3 corebooks... and that also required even more money in the form of further books (DMG 2) and DDI (Skill challenge articles) to actually get right. I mean we've got a multi-page thread on "pemertonian scene-framing" that only a few posters are actually posting and discussing in because it's like having to read a text book to change one's style in order to accomodate a game that before this edition ran fine under the style you enjoyed. Add to this the fact that certain tools for certain playstyles were left out of the core... such as hirelings and henchmen and I could see how for many 4e just wasn't worth it.

That's not a problem for me as I've always played lots of systems. It's like picking the right tool for the job. When I want X I play Burning Wheel, when I want Y I play Apocalypse World and so on. When I want a rollicking beat-em up with over the top villains trying to 'Destroy the World!' (TM) I think 4e is as good a choice as any.

I've honestly come around to realizing that 4e does actually support a type of game I enjoy running (protagonist enabled, four-colored & high-action adventure fanatsy), but it's not a type I run all the time and it's not even my favorite type of fantasy to run. I also realize that with just a modicum of effort I was already able to play 3.0 & 3.5 (especially with OGL products), and many retro-clones in pretty much the same manner when I wanted to... so while I play 4e occasionally I don't think it was ever going to become my primary game... and I can sympathize with people who werent' willing to keep spending moneyt and effort to get what they wanted out of 4e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yep, I agree with this... D&D was a "general" tool which could be, without too much effort, adapted for different playstyles.

Oddly enough I strongly disagree. oD&D was predicated on a certain style even more tightly than 4e was. This got drifted into a mishmash but with things like Vancian magic hardcoded in and the need for magical healing was never as versatile as e.g. GURPS. Or (to cite modern games) the One Roll Engine, Cortex+ or Apocalypse World engines.

I agree again. I have noticed that often on these boards the claim of 3e being simulationist is often couched in extreme terms (by proponents of 4e) where it is an all or nothing thing... but if you refer back to your first point of adaptability, it wouldn't make sense if 3e or any edition of D&D was a pure simulationist game. The thing i find fuinny is that 4e isn't purein a gamist, narrativist or simulationist sense either... I mean if you want any of these things there are better games out there for it than 4e, but it doesn't stop many of the fans of 4e from claiming that 4e is (for the most part) of a narrativist bent and preferring it to games that do narrativist play much better.

Both games are indeed incoherent. It is a strength in both cases. 4e's just a lot more narrative than 3e. As for preferring it to a game that does narrativist play, it depends what purpose you want.

I think the two sentences I emphasized are very telling. Throughout all the marketing fans of earlier editions were told that the game was the same... but now we can very clearly see that it is not, and that it in fact promotes and runs best under a specific playstyle and with pretty specific assumptions that weren't really layed out or explained well in the first 3 corebooks...

Likewise 3e. I happen to find one of the 3e assumptions required for a good game absolutely crippling. That you're meant to not actually try what the game encourages and rewards.

I've honestly come around to realizing that 4e does actually support a type of game I enjoy running (protagonist enabled, four-colored & high-action adventure fanatsy), but it's not a type I run all the time and it's not even my favorite type of fantasy to run. I also realize that with just a modicum of effort I was already able to play 3.0 & 3.5 (especially with OGL products), and many retro-clones in pretty much the same manner when I wanted to... so while I play 4e occasionally I don't think it was ever going to become my primary game... and I can sympathize with people who werent' willing to keep spending moneyt and effort to get what they wanted out of 4e.

Likewise. 4e was released a year early and with some pretty poor guidance. I have never had objections to people who dislike 4e with valid reasons - and there are plenty of valid reasons. It does action fantasy well but that isn't to everyone's tastes.

 

[Imaro]

Oddly enough I strongly disagree. oD&D was predicated on a certain style even more tightly than 4e was. This got drifted into a mishmash but with things like Vancian magic hardcoded in and the need for magical healing was never as versatile as e.g. GURPS. Or (to cite modern games) the One Roll Engine, Cortex+ or Apocalypse World engines.

That's funny because the multitude of retro-clones (especially those based on Swords and Wizardry, which is a clone of OD&D) wouldn't seem to support your oppinion.

Both games are indeed incoherent. It is a strength in both cases. 4e's just a lot more narrative than 3e. As for preferring it to a game that does narrativist play, it depends what purpose you want.

And, IMO 3e is more simulationist (especially if you confine yourself to low level play) than 4e. I'm calling out the fact that 3e is held to some simulationist purity standard by some proponents in 4e when no one on the other side is claiming it is a pure simulationist game... only that it scratches that itch for many better then 4e does.

Likewise 3e. I happen to find one of the 3e assumptions required for a good game absolutely crippling. That you're meant to not actually try what the game encourages and rewards.

Before I even comment on this...what exacty does the game encourage?

Likewise. 4e was released a year early and with some pretty poor guidance. I have never had objections to people who dislike 4e with valid reasons - and there are plenty of valid reasons. It does action fantasy well but that isn't to everyone's tastes.

Really? What are some of those "valid" reasons?

 

[Argyle King]

In your gondola example it sounds like you were taking the DMG's very very rough guidelines on breaking objects, and using them for a purpose for which they were not intended. Because breaking the gondola was critically important to scene resolution, the 'correct' intended way to do your gondola-breaking in 4e would actually be a Skill Challenge (probably 6 or 9 successes and mostly Hard DCs, depending on the attacks used, failure = can't be broken within the duration of the encounter). I certainly appreciate that the DMG does not do a great job of making this clear.

You could do the gondola-breaking as process-simulation in 4e, and I might well do it that way, but then you would have needed to work out appropriate defenses, Damage Resistance, and hit points for the cable - and the DMG doesn't give you most of that, so you would have needed to use your own judgement.

Edit: Still, it is FAR better that you erred on the side of making the gondola too easy to break, resolving the scene too early. The one really bad experience I have had playing 4e was a GM who did the opposite - there was exactly one way to end the encounter, by solving the arcane multi-stage skill challenge/puzzle trap the way he had designed it, and damned if he was going to let me do anything else. To do so he arbitrarily made the stonework of the traproom door & frescoes completely immune to my dwarf barbarian's GIANT HAMMER and massive damage rolls, in order to railroad the resolution the way he had intended. Whereas in your case, you might have been a bit unhappy but I bet the players didn't mind much!

I think, in hindsight, I might now create the gondolas without cables at all. Instead, they would float on some sort of magic current which propelled them and caused them to hover. That seems more in line with some of the assumptions of 4E. I had considered that originally, but I did want breaking the enemy's gondola to be possible.

The skill challenge idea is interesting, but I have some issues with how similar ideas have worked out in the past. In particular, one of the early pieces of advice for how to add a skill challenge to a combat was by using a trap which needed to be disabled. Unfortunately, what I found was that it rarely made sense for the PCs to engage in the skill challenge, and it was often far better (and faster) for the PCs to simply use brute force to smash the trap. I feel as though I'd have to rule that doing damage to the object in question without engaging in the skill challenge simply doesn't work, but I'm not normally comfortable with the idea of arbitrarily making something immune to damage. I don't have a problem with saying a certain kind of attack or tactic is ineffective, but I dislike saying the only way to interact with something is by using the one specific way (skill challenge) that I as DM have decided upon. It's ok to me to say something works poorly, but to say that nothing at all has a possibility of working isn't a style I usually like.

You're right though. My players didn't mind too much at the time. I just had wanted to try something which I otherwise wouldn't have in previous editions. 4E seemed to encourage the idea when I was designing it. In actually play, I expected things to pan out in a manner which was more dramatic. I had more success with later attempts at similar things, but it took me quite a while until I got to a point where I felt comfortable being as creative as I normally like to be with encounters. Once I got to that point, I had a lot of fun.

 

[Herschel]

For some, dragonborn, eladrin and shardminds should not have been brought into being at all, for others they should have been more marginalized as variant options. I'm guessing that the latter is what will end up happening in 5E - they'll be around, but the core game will be more traditional.

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking?

Dragonborn and Tieflings were in the new "core" because the half-dragon/demon templates were so popular in 3.5 and those things were EVERYWHERE IME so it makes sense they put them there. I was never a fan of those templates so it wan't a big deal to me but I know a whole lot of people were.

As for Eladrin, when's the last time there wasn't 3700 different variety of elf-types? Sun/Moon, Wild/Wood, Sea, Drow, High, Chartreuse, Valley, Preppy, Melmack, Will Ferrell and every other sub-shoot have been cluttering up the racial tables for as long as AD&D has had supplements.

 

[S'mon]

I think the two sentences I emphasized are very telling. Throughout all the marketing fans of earlier editions were told that the game was the same... but now we can very clearly see that it is not, and that it in fact promotes and runs best under a specific playstyle and with pretty specific assumptions that weren't really layed out or explained well in the first 3 corebooks... and that also required even more money in the form of further books (DMG 2) and DDI (Skill challenge articles) to actually get right. I mean we've got a multi-page thread on "pemertonian scene-framing" that only a few posters are actually posting and discussing in because it's like having to read a text book to change one's style in order to accomodate a game that before this edition ran fine under the style you enjoyed. Add to this the fact that certain tools for certain playstyles were left out of the core... such as hirelings and henchmen and I could see how for many 4e just wasn't worth it.

Heh heh. Yeah, I agree - and I've said it recently, Ze Game Iz Not Ze Same. I tried to run it Ze Same and it did not work particularly well. Pre-3e D&D can be easily drifted to preferred style by the GM. 3e D&D can be drifted if the GM and all participants round the table agree to do so - the GM trying to do it solo will go badly; if he wanted to do that he needs to buy or create a d20 variant rather than run 3e per se. 4e has a very specific style it's very good at - the 'Pemertonian' style I advocate in that other thread, and a relatively narrow driftable band around that style. Lots of approaches don't work in 4e that do work acceptably in other editions, and WoTC produced a lot of garbage adventures that demonstrate some of them.

I don't think WoTC understood 4e. Actually I don't think D&D designers have understood their game since Gygax & Arneson, who did seem to have an intuitive understanding of what they were doing. 2e has Paladins & Princesses fluff on an unsuitable OD&D Dungeoncrawler base. 3e when you dig into it is a weird Tweet/Cook/Williams mash-up of Ars Magica caster supremacy*, crunch-for-crunch's sake, and hodge podge of bits of simulation on the continuing OD&D legacy base. 4e is a radically different design with minimal legacy elements - and if they knew that, they were scared to say so.

*I shall henceforth refer to 3e as "Grogs and Demigods"

 

[S'mon]

The skill challenge idea is interesting, but I have some issues with how similar ideas have worked out in the past. In particular, one of the early pieces of advice for how to add a skill challenge to a combat was by using a trap which needed to be disabled. Unfortunately, what I found was that it rarely made sense for the PCs to engage in the skill challenge, and it was often far better (and faster) for the PCs to simply use brute force to smash the trap. I feel as though I'd have to rule that doing damage to the object in question without engaging in the skill challenge simply doesn't work, but I'm not normally comfortable with the idea of arbitrarily making something immune to damage.

I would say that a successful attack roll + damage above a certain threshold with a suitable energy type or weapon should equal 1 success in the SC. ie using brute force to destroy the gondola would be the skill challenge.

 

[Sunseeker]

4e is a radically different design with minimal legacy elements

Perhaps they looked back at the editions before them and saw what you say, and realized a radically different design was the only route to go. *shrug*

 

[Sunseeker]

I would say that a successful attack roll + damage above a certain threshold with a suitable energy type or weapon should equal 1 success in the SC. ie using brute force to destroy the gondola would be the skill challenge.

Unless the object in question cannot be destroyed by brute force(say, an inter-dimensional portal or some other non-corporeal object, or doing so would just set the trap off) I always allow my players to just "smash it until they win".

 

[Imaro]

Perhaps they looked back at the editions before them and saw what you say, and realized a radically different design was the only route to go. *shrug*

Then I definitely feel that they should have been upfront about it in both the marketing and the game material (such as adventures and initial advice). It has taken me a long time (and some dissapoointing experiences with my group, including a memeber quitting) to get to the point where I (at least partially) get what type of games 4e is good for running out the box and what type it has minimal to no real support for (and/or has support that came years later for).