D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Zardnaar]

One could argue the success of the 4th ed book was due to the goodwill and brand name 3rd ed had. Once people had another option or realized it was not for them they walked.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Your choice of examples is telling, whether you see it or not. The type of action that 4e was targetting includes the type of action you see in Star Wars, and people often refer to 4e's tone as "super-heroes". Changing between them is a fairly straightforward "reskinning" or re-coloring. Trying something like Game of Thrones or Black Company is more difficult. You're right about 3e, too. The difference is that its just easier to adjust that tone with 3e, as you seem to admit(?). Mostly because....

We will have to just disagree then, 3e is through-and-through a fantasy genre game. Just look at d20 Modern, which IS exactly attempting to revamp the game. It STILL reeks of 3e even after they scrapped every class, every feat, every spell, actually pretty much the whole game except the core mechanic. Honestly there's almost nothing of 3e left in d20 Modern and yet it STILL plays like 3e.

...doing this is much harder in 4e than previous editions. Consider what that means for the different systems. If I want to adjust magic, or combat, or any other feature of the game....I can take 3e and do that by adding some feats, changing a few rules about initiative or combat casting, etc. Because of the structure, I can make changes to the tone of the game by directly addressing it. Now to do the same in 4e...well just consider what it would take to alter the tone of melee combat....all those powers to review and modify... In which system is it easier to generate a new class? If, as I am often informed, the powers and their functioning (all the X's and O's) is a necessary vehicle for the 4e architecture to convey tone, reworking the tone of melee combat would require examining and rewriting hundreds (thousands, by now?) of melee powers in multiple classes. I think sheer proliferation of classes, feats, spells, etc. in 3PP and on the internet argues for 3e/d20 there. In the older systems, things are even less structured.

Thoroughly disagree. It is so funny when you say this, "Gosh, I could remove almost all the elements of 3e and hey-presto I easily have a different game!" and then "Gosh I would have to remove all the elements from 4e to make a different game, gosh how difficult", ummm, lul wut? The power concept, conditions, potentially as many as ALL details of many powers, possibly even many classes, all that can remain the same as much or as little as serves your purpose with 4e. What makes a 4e class harder to build than a 3e class? Surely you're not suggesting that 3e classes for a completely different genre can make ANY USE AT ALL of D&D spells???!!! They are very thoroughly tied to the D&D narrative conventions. 4e powers OTOH can trivially be reused. Any arguments you can make about tone, genre, agenda, etc with one game are pretty much applicable to the other.

Which is not to say that older editions were some universal system...far from it. However, the less narrative specificity the mechanics incur, the more is up to the table to invent. For any of the systems in question, the amount of work required is proportional to the deviation from its "home" tone and feel. Its just that slope of those valleys differs between the systems. I'll go a step further and point to a game that I suspect would be even harder to bend away from its native feel than 4e would be: Dungeon World. Reading the notes about how they developed the moves for the various classes...wow...at least 4e gives you a core mathematics to work from as you crank out the powers. In DW, you'd have to test and re-test each new or re-worked power to see how it felt in play. (I could be wrong on that, though. Folks are cranking out new DW classes fairly quickly. I haven't heard much talk about relative quality, though.)

The mechanics of previous editions have FAR MORE NARRATIVE SPECIFICITY than 4e does, that's the whole problem. Cure Light Wounds and Prismatic Sphere and Turn Undead and etc etc etc are all pretty much unequivocally tied to the genre and because the narrative elements are deeply entwined with the mechanics its all going to be rewritten, or more likely just tossed along with D&D spell casting classes entire. 4e material OTOH is quite amenable to reworking. Even if you did create a game with a very different play style, say one that abstracted combat considerably, you could still easily write powers for that game, and reuse many existing powers even, but you'd be hard pressed to reuse 3e or earlier material that way.

Sure you have. They were called alignment restrictions and Paladins were/are the poster child for them, especially when a thief or assassin was in the party (or anybody evil/chaotic, in some versions). Of course, the old-school Paladin mainly faced the "stick" end of the mechanics. Gold for XP, and class-based XP rewards were a "carrot" to help push the thieves and assassins into conflict with the Pallys. Its a mechanic that drives players to confront a dramatic premise: Narrativist to the core. Above, when you asked if I could see adding Narrative Agendas to D&DNext, I was referring to this. Bolt on a more sophisticated and variable version and voila, you've got it. Coming up with the rules module for this wouldn't be exactly trivial, but its not impossible or even terribly difficult.

LOL, you're trying to argue for a narrative agenda in pre-4e D&D? Ummmmmm, no. Alignment restrictions are to narrativist agenda as hand grenades are to tweezers, you can certainly remove a sliver from your toe with either one.

No argument here, although many will argue that 4e breaks the trend towards process-sim.

LOL, I didn't think it was even necessary to mention that It is virtually the point.

Yes. Once the basic idea of an rpg was out there, people started making other versions to better address things they wanted to see (with wildly varying degrees of success). That process hardly stopped or even slowed when 4e came out, so I'm not sure what you think it proves. Its not like 4e came out and suddenly all the other companies and indie designers closed up shop crying "Finally we have found the perfect Role-playing architecture!"

No, I was simply responding to your (and many previous posts with the same gist at various times) that somehow 4e is 'narrow' and 'inflexible'. It is just, well, I'm finding it hard to come up with the right adjective, puzzling in its wideness of the mark. It isn't even that I think there's a vast difference in flexibility between editions, just that its quite clear to me that 4e can be used to do a whole bunch of things and it isn't that hard. I think its fair to say that puts it on a par with any other edition, at least.

 

[Ratskinner]

We will have to just disagree then,

Good enough.

It isn't even that I think there's a vast difference in flexibility between editions, just that its quite clear to me that 4e can be used to do a whole bunch of things and it isn't that hard. I think its fair to say that puts it on a par with any other edition, at least.

Certainly it is a matter of degrees.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Dude, every single thread you start amounts to, "Next should do this like 3e/PF."

This most recent packet is the first time it's seemed like Next is going in a new direction of its own. It's even taking cues from Dungeon World, strangely enough, in its exploration rules.

-O

I have to admit, this last L&L certainly at least seems like the first time DDN has ventured beyond the most safe territory, though it hasn't gone FAR. I have yet to see something that I think makes me particularly excited, but if they can ditch the "this is a rehash" trope they might break out of the stale design they're in now.

 

[Scott DeWar]

A year ago I thought they had a chance of creating a unified game but now I agree with you.

spam reported

 

[Jester David]

That's a very peculiar and biased way to measure. 4e is the currently supported edition of D&D, which WotC is shipping as a product as we speak. It is the ONLY edition for which any support material is being provided, for which customer support is provided, for which errata is provided, and the only edition which has related content being published on DDI. Nor has WotC actually said that DSG is somehow the 'last book of 4e' (I don't really dispute that they're not going to publish any new 4e books, that may well be true, but neither of us know that). In fact, given that they won't have a replacement system this year, I wouldn't really be at all surprised to see some 4e material at GenCon etc. Even if we never do, 4e isn't 'dead' at all, it has lasted as long as 3.5, and even slightly longer.

As I said earlier, 3.5e lasted a couple months longer than 4e, June 2003 to December 2007 compared to June 2008 to May 2012, almost half a year longer. (And if we're counting 3.0 and 3.5 as separate editions for duration it might be fair to spit 4e into Classic 4e and Essentials.)

And right now 4e is the only unsupported edition. They're publishing adventures for 1e, accessories for 3e, and core books for 2e. And this summer we get a brand new adventure for 1e.

Again, you really have to begin to understand business. It isn't about products that succeed or fail. It is about ROI, and pretty much nothing else.

And right now they decided that two years with zero return on investment is better than continuing to publish material. And that the ROI on luxurybbooks people might already own and can find cheaper on eBay or Amazon is better than brand new 4e books.

Any edition which has gone 4 years is unlikely to be able to compete with the idea of spending the same money on new core books for a new edition, which are known to be VASTLY the highest selling part of any game.

Yes they are. However... the longer an edition runs the more profitable the core books become. After the initial print run you stop paying off the development, writing, art. Profit increases.
You want to keep reprinting the core rulebooks and producing content that feeds continued sales of those core books.

And 2013 will be the fourth year of Pathfinder and thirteenth year of 3e. And it's still going strong. The core Rulebook did quite well for it's first three years with the fifth printing (in late 2011) being the largest yet: after two years they were selling more core rulebooks than their first year.

The 4e PHB1 was the highest selling RPG book in history.

Citation please?
That's a pretty bold claim considering 1e was the best selling edition (with only a dozen hardcover books over 10 years).

The primary drama here is the splatbook treadmill.

I think WotC has learned that fewer splatbooks but bigger and broader appeal splatbooks are a better source of income, as are spatbooks that feed sales of the core rulebook.
And it sounds like they really want to focus on adventures, campaign worlds, and rules modules.

[/QUOTE]I'd say Strategically WotC is trying to change the tempo a bit, because they'd like to time things so that next time Paizo releases a core refresh that they can FOLLOW it. They learned that lesson good, its better to release your core books 6 mo after the other guy and cut out the tail of his sales and force him to burn money, like they are now.[/QUOTE]
Except Paizo doesn't sound like it's planning on releasing an update or new edition any time soon.

 

[Zardnaar]

The updated Pathfinder is going to be the Pathfinder MMO. That will fix a lot of the problems 3rd ed has, basically blatant spell abuse as being a PC game it will be somewhat railroaded at least as far as what one can do. It is also not going to be as grindy as a lot of MMORPGs as you are going to level up just for playing the game so you can build a house or whatever and have virtual settlements etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The only real "truth" we can almost universally accept regarding D&D Next is that WotC determined it was in their best interests to produce a new version of the D&D game.

The "why" is going to always be nebulous, and likely debated long after the actual rules are released (there's still people debating the changeover from 1e to 2e--or even OD&D to 1e, for heaven's sake). But clearly, from a product, revenue, and / or brand standpoint, WotC thinks 5e is a good business decision.

That said, like you @billd91, I sympathize with the 4e customers who feel they're being abandoned, though from my perspective I think the 4e fanbase is getting much more overall sympathy than the 3e adherents received in 2007-2008 from the 4e early adopters. Partially because I think the 3e fanbase is now recognizing that the situations are similar, and in no small part because Paizo on the whole is more than adequately serving their needs, and no longer have as much currently invested in the WotC / D&D brand.

Someone else in this thread, I forget who, basically said if the 4e fanbase were to go into a rage and demand more concessions in the 5e design process, he'd give 'em what they wanted, and I agree with that sentiment.

I haven't responded to a single playtest survey, because despite having downloaded three iterations so far, I can't convince my group to try it out. But I don't think it's unfair, or even malicious if WotC actually WAS using the supplied demographic data to inform their design and business process. As a company, they'd be NEGLIGENT to all of their stakeholders--employees included--if they weren't going to try and produce a high-quality, broadly salable product that would drive success.

And if abandoning much of 4e's "core" to reach a larger audience is part of that overall strategy, then it is, as they say, what it is.

I think what would be more interesting to me at this point would be to get in the heads of the 4e design and strategy team back in 2007, and hear what their expectations actually were regarding the success of 4e. This is pure conjecture, but I'd be willing to bet that most of them thought that 4e was going to be a home run--it was going to completely re-vamp the industry and their player base, and was going to be the "core platform" for the D&D brand for at minimum 8-10 years of business (games, board games, miniatures battles, DDI, virtual tabletop, video game licensing, cross-media content).

I can identify with what you're saying. Of course the problem is it doesn't in any way change the situation from my 4e-enjoying perspective. As [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] speculated earlier, is it really impossible to build a good universally appealing game on the 4e chassis, or is it just sour milk as he put it? I think NOW it is, but I think in a purely technical sense that is still probably the best option in terms of designing a game.

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/interview-with-a-wizard-mike-mearls/ is a rather interesting interview that came out a couple weeks ago. The answer to the first question is revealing of Mike's thought process and how he interprets what people are telling WotC. I won't get into a debate about what I think of that one way or another, but I will note that, as with other interviews with WotC folk, there's never been a point where they've even hinted that there was some sort of crisis or that they were alarmed by things like PF or anything like that. While you can call that 'the corporate line', and I'm that wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, it sounds to me like it wasn't a consideration of 4e being problematic, just "we will do better if we do X instead". So, yeah, I think 2007's 4e team would have called it a success and expected to at most follow it on with further iterations in the same vein. At this point though? They're just being bit harder and harder by the treadmill.

I did find it interesting that Mike seemed almost negative about the OGL too (and I notice he's not really kind to 3e, either). I really think he's got this vision in his head about where things need to be. I don't know for sure where exactly it came from. Some of it from at least the part of the fan base that shares his mindset (whatever fraction that is, another thing to not argue about), some of it from his own personal preferences, and some from feedback of the people around him. I'm curious too about the degree to which Mike shaped the makeup of the current dev team.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, but I can't make the party play low power heroes by reducing point buy or make them gods and natural born champions by increasing point buy.
Nor did 4e have alternate rate of advancement, magic item acquirement (just two: all or none).

Ehhhhhh, I think that's not true. 4e can vary rate of advancement trivially, XP are for NO other purpose, and DMG1 clearly points this out (in the 'rewards' chapter). While TECHNICALLY 4e doesn't explain how you would vary magic items it is not actually a big deal unless you're fixated on having EXACT math (IE, big deal, you're 15th level and have a +1 weapon, your character will have some trouble with 16th+ level monsters but the DM is not obliged to use such monsters). Once you have inherent bonus (we invented this rule LONG before DMG2 BTW, it was not rocket science) you CAN give out as many or few magic items as you care to. The PCs don't NEED their bonuses, though they CAN gain an advantage from having level+5 items.

I'm not sure what "make them like gods" would entail, something besides just starting at higher level? 4e actually DOES have a point buy, for ability scores BTW, you normally get 25 points, but nothing stops you from giving out more or less. You could couple this with starting at higher level for a more "godlike" experience (or just make the monsters weaker, pretty trivial in 4e's fully scaled system). Low power heroes could be accomplished in the opposite fashion, less points for ability scores, tougher monsters, fewer items, etc. You could also limit players access to themes and even feats. You could play an 'E10' (or even 'E6') variant.

All of this is quite easy. I admit, the transparent nature of 4e system math means people PERCEIVE this kind of thing as 'tricky' somehow, but in actual fact once you do your first 4e hack, you will be AMAZED at how easy it is and how stupidly robust the system is. Say all you like about the 'feel' of 4e, etc, but one thing that you can't fault is the resilience of the design, it has a LOT of firewalls built in, from AEDU to the way treasure works.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, those were the rules by the Chatty DM IIRC. But after the "Level 0" it's into the game as per normal.

And yes, I missed an "or" in the second sentence.


As much as I hate to use message board fallacies, this is the Oberoni Fallacy.
Yes, as the DM you can do whatever you want with experience, but that's adding a house rule outside the content provided by the game.

I would have liked a fast/normal/slow experience table along and a low magic/ high magic treasure parcel system. Some variation.

Excuding the four or five Unearthed Arcana articles in Dragon there's only a single optional rule in all of 4th Edition: inherent bonuses. And most of those were additive and didn't really change anything in the game. The focus just isn't on tweaking or customizing the game; you aren't given any tools or variant rules to hack the game.

No, but to be fair you ARE given a HUGELY flexible system in terms of resolving and running things. You have the Quest concept as a basic story building device, and then you have a whole skill challenge system, which can be employed at a number of levels if you wish (there are some suggestions about this, though not many).

For instance if your player wanted to run a castle, what would be the things he would need to do? He'd need to acquire the castle (this would be some sort of RP/adventure/challenge, or maybe even just "congrats you inherit a castle!" depending on desires) or build a castle (skill challenge would work great here, maybe several of them, maybe with added encounters that could provide 'plot money'). Then you'd need to staff the castle (again you could use encounters, RP, and/or SCs to hire a staff). From there on the DM can direct the story how he wants, presenting different sorts of problems to solve, disasters, financial machinations, etc. There are VERY clear and rather obvious tools provided by the system that clearly work for this kind of thing in the form of the skill and SC system and just the general way everything can be scaled to a check and DCs scaled along with flavor to make the challenges level appropriate (IE a low level PCs castle might suffer a flood, a high level PCs castle might suffer a volcanic eruption).

So, while I'm not disagreeing with you that 4e doesn't use optional rules as such, it does provide such a broad system of resolution and such consistent mechanics that its REALLY hard for me to think of a reason to need an optional rule. Again the system's design is so transparent and open that even when you want to change aspects of the game it is very obvious how to do it.