will 4.0 succeed?

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) Although why the heck anyone thought 4E would would be a big hit with these groups is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Not really.

After the unholy abomination of the 3.xE stat block*, I can imagine a TSR-era fan finding the 4E stat block a lot more manageable. I seem to recall that Clark Peterson was actually quite positive about 4E after his first look and made public comments about how it had some some sort of old school feel. Of course, the GSL soon put paid to that.

In many ways, I think I am an old school DM (1981-2014: coming up on 33 years of this game) and I find 4E captures a lot of those old school sensibilities quite well, other than the fact that the PCs are more likely to survive the first few levels, thieves don't suck, and the game basically makes sense.

 

[dd.stevenson]

No real limits on multiclassing and making it very easy to do. 4e reintroduced restrictions, or more stringent restrictions on multiclassing to try to make it less easily abused.

Classes as true archtypes. In otherwords, along with making it so that characters were not a conglomeration of ten different classes and such, to make it so that the classes were stronger in and of themselves. Hence a fighter was truly someone who had trained for years and could really fight! as opposed to a multiclass character that had simply gotten to be a fighter over the past day because...well...just because.

Characters and monsters were NOT the same types. They were different and hence used different rules. Aka...1e. Monsters are not heroes, and heroes are not monsters.

XP is not tenuously based upon some CR rating...but there are set XPs for challenges and foes. Hence, even if it's a very small amount...you can still earn XP from killing that low level monster from 1st level...even if you are 19th level. It may not count for much, but you can still do so.

Less system mastery, and more even handed ness for players going in.

These were all various grudges that many older players from AD&D seemed to have with 3e...and 4e tried to correct it to a degree.
(snip)

After the unholy abomination of the 3.xE stat block*, I can imagine a TSR-era fan finding the 4E stat block a lot more manageable. (snip)

My question is: were these the most common criticisms leveled by TSR-era fans back in 2008? I'm curious, as I wasn't active on any TTRPG messageboards at that time, and these reasons you've given don't really match the common complaints I hear from the OSR today.

thieves don't suck

Tell me about it. I houseruled that all backstabs autohit, or do max damage--player's choice.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

My question is: were these the most common criticisms leveled by TSR-era fans back in 2008? I'm curious, as I wasn't active on any TTRPG messageboards at that time, and these reasons you've given don't really match the common complaints I hear from the OSR today. (snip)

Buggered if I know.

I gave my perspective on the issue but it's not the only perspective I have on the matter. Nor was it meant to represent the most common complaint. It was just a possible answer to the question you raise: it certainly wasn't an attempt at a definitive ex cathedra pronouncement.

 

[GreyLord]

My question is: were these the most common criticisms leveled by TSR-era fans back in 2008? I'm curious, as I wasn't active on any TTRPG messageboards at that time, and these reasons you've given don't really match the common complaints I hear from the OSR today.

Tell me about it. I houseruled that all backstabs autohit, or do max damage--player's choice.

Some were. Some weren't. There were big complaints from some people about the multiclassing and what they considered broken system mastery/multiclassing options. Enter PunPun.

Not so much on the forums, but there was a silent (aka...not really silent, but not anywhere close as vocal as the m/c haters) group that complained about the CR system and how they felt it was to confining and limiting, too dependant on characters following exactly the guidelines of equipment and other items...and how it was easily unbalanced one way or the other due to party configuration and equipment and ability choices.

DM's complained about prep time with many focusing on the monster rules and how they had to spend so much time because they designed every creature like they would a PC (personally, I didn't do this, but I suppose many DMs did).

Ironically, it wasn't just 4e that delved into this territory though from what I understand. From what I saw with how Paizo worked with PF, I think these same items popped up with their playtests and they also tackled these things (albeit with a different method) head on also.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Hmm...I'm mixed on this. On one hand, why do they need to be explicit? Isn't implied, or at least they "reserve the right" to revise the game? And isn't a revision not a bad thing, meaning it theoretically improves the game?

It seems that with a game such as D&D with so many moving parts, there's no way around some degree of revision - if only in errata-ed later printings. I can definitely see a three-year mark, like they did with 3.5, that not only re-prints with errata, but fixes and problems with math and such that might have arisen in 2+ years of heavy play by thousands of groups.

On the other hand, I agree with you insofar as its a nice gesture. I just don't think they "need" to do it, or need to justify a revision because its implied in the nature of the game.

I agree with you here, but a lot of gamers seem to expect their current ruleset to go untouched for many years, if not forever, and so they get in a huff over 'frequent' revisions. (Never mind that revisions are optional.) I can't count the number of complaints I've heard about 4e's errata. And errata's free!

Given that each of the previous two major editions were areaction/overreaction to the perceived issues of the previous edition (3e gavepeople choices when OS D&D was seen as not having enough choices and 4egave very strict balance) it will be interesting to see what the next majoredition will “fix” from 5e. Will thedesigners of 6e talk about 5e being too modular and that D&D should be morefocused on a particular playstyle? Willit be decided that 5e focused too much on DM empowerment? Time will tell.

Indeed, I've been thinking of each new edition as the movement of a pendulum, for a while now. The pendulum swings in many directions, first toward rules detail and character options, then toward balance and dynamic play, and now toward nostalgia and modularity. I'm looking forward to seeing which way 5e sends the pendulum swinging into 6e.

Maybe the edition cycle can last longer with Paizo if they don't have the sales/profit pressures of WotC.

I suspect that the difference between edition cycles and PF's relative longevity is more a matter of economics than choice. If it were more feasible to start deving PF 2.0, I think Paizo would.

 

[Hussar]

There's also the question of does Paizo have the resources to drop millions of dollars developing Pathfinder 2.0. Remember, 3e was the result of Pokedollars and MtG money. Wotc had the money to sink.

Pathfinder is the most popular form of DnD but isn't anywhere near in that league.

 

[Jester David]

There's also the question of does Paizo have the resources to drop millions of dollars developing Pathfinder 2.0. Remember, 3e was the result of Pokedollars and MtG money. Wotc had the money to sink.

Pathfinder is the most popular form of DnD but isn't anywhere near in that league.

I imagine Pathfinder Revised will look as similar to Pathfinder OE as 2nd Edition looked to 1st Edition. Or many other games that release a revision.

They'll likely rip out all the stuff they left in to be backwards compatible with 3e (seemed like a good idea at the time), tweak the numbers, revise the math, rejigger all the classes, and release that. Possibly with conversion documents for adapting monsters and adventures.

Really, that's the only route they can go. They can't go "Old School" like D&D Next because there's no roots to return to. And they can't go for the complete overhaul, because that's a little too much 4th Edition; Pathfinder doesn't have enough identity as a separate game and IP to make such a massive mechanical transition.

 

[seregil]

There's also the question of does Paizo have the resources to drop millions of dollars developing Pathfinder 2.0. Remember, 3e was the result of Pokedollars and MtG money. Wotc had the money to sink.

Pathfinder is the most popular form of DnD but isn't anywhere near in that league.

I would also point out that having too much money is an issue. 4e had it and, as the many edition war threads would indicate, it did not really do well. I suspect that any new version that Paizo puts out would be just as good as anything WOTC/Hasbro has put out. If only for the fact that they don't have some corporate hack interfering with the process but mostly BECAUSE they are closer to the ground/realistic than a megacorp that thinks that annual layoffs is a normal thing to do.

Gygax and Arneson built Dnd in their basement on a typewriter and their issues began when they got too big, so I am not too worried about Paizo's LACK of money.

Doesn't mean they can't get it wrong, just that if they do, it probably won't be because they lacked money.

EDIT:spelling

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

There's also the question of does Paizo have the resources to drop millions of dollars developing Pathfinder 2.0. Remember, 3e was the result of Pokedollars and MtG money. Wotc had the money to sink.

Pathfinder is the most popular form of DnD but isn't anywhere near in that league.

13th Age was put together relatively cheaply.

I think if there is a clear design direction you could knock out a new edition of any form of D&D for a fraction of the time and cost required for WotC to do Next.

 

[keterys]

I loved 3rd edition for years, but was fairly exhausted by a few key aspects of 3rd edition by the time 4th came around. Basically, it became less about playing the game at the table and more about playing the game - like a mix of wargaming and accounting - off the table. Character and monster building, planning 17 levels out so you made sure to take the feats in the right order to get the levels of your 4 classes to do the... spell synergy this, special item that, etc. I'd already been trying out all kinds of variants to see what worked: Mutants and Masterminds, True20, and other systems, while thinking fondly back at my D&D Cyclopedia, pondering E6, and eventually running custom versions of 3e that simplified things down a lot, especially on the DM side of things.

Then 4E showed up, and it had its rough edges, but it was a lot of fun for a while as well. The biggest shame was on the marketing and legal side. How the heck you screw the pooch so badly with Paizo, Necromancer, various old hands. Though I'll grant that they also tried to shoehorn the PHB far too much. They needed a mix of options, not _just_ the same layout. Not courageous enough. 4e's still got its problems, which clearly aren't going to get attention now, at least not from WotC.

I'm not really seeing that D&D Next is going to answer everything I'm looking for, but I'll play it a bit. 13th Age OTOH has been a blast so far. A couple proud nails, I'll admit, but it's a _lot_ closer to the "somewhere between BECMI and 4th" that I'd been pondering. I'm a bit more reluctant to dive wholehog in like I was on 3rd and 4th. So maybe I'll just play a variety of systems again, like I used to back in the 2E days where we started up a new campaign with a new ruleset every 3 months.