D&D 4E What can Next do to pull in 4e campaigns?

[Wulfgar76]

In any case, I doubt theater of the mind is likely to bring 4e players to 5e. If anything, theater of the mind is a rejection of the premise of 4e.

I'm betting there are a lot of dissatisfied 4e players, just as there is a lot dissatisfied 3e/PF players.
It seems the more you play either edition, the less you like it - especially if you're the DM.

I think D&D Next has a good chance of converting the 'dissenters'.

 

[pemerton]

In any case, I doubt theater of the mind is likely to bring 4e players to 5e. If anything, theater of the mind is a rejection of the premise of 4e.

I don't think I'll be taking up D&Dnext, but I'm with [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]: if it's going to do ToTM I'd rather it do it properly (eg via zones) than via GM approximation of 5' distances. (At least AD&D only required the GM to approximate down to 10' distances.)

pemerton, one of these days we'll have to play together. Even if it is 4e. The tagline on my blog is "D&D rules, Call of Cthulhu play paradigm." I consider most of my setting endeavors to be a hybrid between typical sword & sorcery and Lovecraftian horror (and sometimes other things too. Like noir, or Westerns.) That right there that I quoted is right up my alley.

Maybe our D&Ding paths will cross!

For various reasons I'm not a big fan either of the dungeon crawl paradigm, or of the humanoid genocide paradigm, so I tend to incline my games towards cultists, demons, undead etc where the rationale for fighting is either more immediate (these cultists are about to sacrifice the villagers), or more cosmological (undead are abominations who must be rooted out).

I don't tend to go for the bleakness of the Lovecraftian approach, but I quite like the alien-horrors-whose-touch-is-caustic-to-the-everyday-world trope. In my Oriental Adventures Rolemaster game, I linked this trope with some ideas from Buddhism about the nature of enlightenment and transcendence of illusion to set up some interesting dynamics between the heavens, the infinite Buddhas, and the "super-enlightened" beings of the outer void (eg Tsen = Ssendam, Slaad Lord of the Insane from the Fiend Folio). It was a fun campaign, although still with an underlying heroic vibe: in the end, the PCs rescued the god who had been trapped in the void holding off the incursions of the Cthulhoid horrors, and replaced him with a karmic simulacrum of the paladin PC created by trickery involving a fallen Lord of Karma (the Ordainer - a Rolemaster monster concept - who was also the Asmodeus and the Demogorgon of that campaign). So in the end they all lived happily ever after, and the universe was saved, at least for another cycle or two.

In my 4e game, the Far Realm has mostly been in the background, although it is part of the story in my game for how the Raven Queen lost her name (she did a deal with the stars to hide it for her, in return to elevating Ometh, one of their servants, to the status of an exarch). But the chaos sorcerer, who is a drow demonskin adept who reveres the primordial Chan as well as the elf-god Corellon, flirts with wild and chaotic forces more than is good for him. And I see an encounter with Ygorl, the slaad lord of entropy, in his near future!

 

[pemerton]

I'm betting there are a lot of dissatisfied 4e players, just as there is a lot dissatisfied 3e/PF players.
It seems the more you play either edition, the less you like it - especially if you're the DM.

I'm sure there are people playing 4e although they don't like it as much as they would like to.

The other generalisation, though, certainly doesn't apply in my case - in fact, the more I run 4e the more I see some of its strengths - although of course its weakness also remain evident.

Presumably there are some who like it less the more they play it, but I don't see any evidence that they're a majority, or otherwise the norm. (Nor for 3E or PF.)

 

[Obryn]

I'm betting there are a lot of dissatisfied 4e players, just as there is a lot dissatisfied 3e/PF players.
It seems the more you play either edition, the less you like it - especially if you're the DM.

I think D&D Next has a good chance of converting the 'dissenters'.

I think there's a certain sense of fatigue that settles in eventually with any game, but I haven't hit that with 4e yet. I hit it with 3.x many years ago to where I pretty don't want to run it ever again and am very hesitant about playing it when there's so many games I'd rather play.

With that said, it's good and healthy to take breaks even from games you like and experience the wider world of gaming. Playing more games makes you a better gamer. I don't know right now if Next would be a game with enough mechanical interest and diversity to include in that rotation, but I'm not taking it off the table.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Everyone knows what a fireball does ...

I just realized, reading this thread, that even though I have decades of D&D play under my belt -- or maybe because of it -- that if I saw "fireball" as an ability in a stat block for a monster I would have no concise idea what it did.

I am pretty sure it would be a ball. And fiery. Not sure what size ball. If the game used feet or squares, I'd guess a 20' radius, otherwise maybe it'd fill the zone or maybe 2d3 creatures in the zone? As far as damage, I'm pretty sure it does some amount of d6s, I think 5 in some systems, but maybe equal to the level of the creature? I vaguely recall 3.5 had, like, three or four ways of measuring levels, so if I had a level 16 demon, I guess it would do 16d6, or maybe I'd look up a different measure of level (do monsters get caster levels?). Oh, nearly forgot that 3.5 capped it to 10d6. Did other editions do that also? I'd also assume there is some number somewhere in the stat block that tells me what the attack roll is -- or possibly it always works and I can look up in some other book what the save for the PC is. Maybe that is based on the monster's level adding in either an int or charisma mod, depending on something else I am not sure where I look that up.

Not sure that saying "fireball" is actually terribly helpful for people who are not rules experts. I think I'd prefer a simple description like "targets all creatures in a 20' radius ball; range 20; 20 reflex save; 8d6 damage" or "targets 2d3 nearby targets, +10 vs MD; 8d6 damage". Probably with some extras for special feature for the monster, so a demon might have extra text "if save failed by 5, target is panicked" or "on a natural even hit, dazes target"

I play and enjoy multiple systems. Requiring I memorize even 40 spells for each system would be way too much. And a system where every monster ONLY had one of 40 spells? Too boring to play. Much better is to have generic, simple stat-block powers, to which flavor can be added for uniqueness with little cognitive load.

Now for the players, they will be using the same powers all the time, so they should have a TON of description about them (AD&D's strength) or you have a TON of powers (4e's strength). As a player, I am happy to learn the details of the 5-6 powers I use a lot.

 

[thewok]

How 5E can bring in 4E players:

Be Fifth Edition. The 4E players will play it or not based on their own whims and desires, which widely vary rom 4E player to 4E player. Make a solid game, and people will play it (or not).

When it comes to games, "trying" turns people off. Just make it a good game and it will stand on its own merits.

 

[Desdichado]

I disagree with this. 4e fans already have 4e. And there isn't another RPG that's as good at what 4e does as 4e is. What IME most 4e fans who aren't exclusively 4e fans want is a game that's as good as 4e is at what it does. Next ... feels like the goal is to be good enough rather than to be as good as posible.

Well, the premise of this thread is specifically asking about what can be done to bring 4e fans into Next. It seems that you're saying that 4e fans gonna be 4e fans, and people who are ambivalent about system might well migrate to Next based on its merits. That's good, and almost certainly true, but not really the premise of the thread. If someone's a fan of 4e, they're probably a fan of tactical battlemat combat. Unless they're specifically interesting in 5e as something different, Theater of the Mind won't be what they're looking for.

In the bigger world of D&D fandom, of course, Theater of the Mind might well be a big draw. Especially to those who aren't really big fans of the tactical combat game of 4e. But not specifically to 4e fans, I don't think.

For various reasons I'm not a big fan either of the dungeon crawl paradigm, or of the humanoid genocide paradigm, so I tend to incline my games towards cultists, demons, undead etc where the rationale for fighting is either more immediate (these cultists are about to sacrifice the villagers), or more cosmological (undead are abominations who must be rooted out).

Me too!

I don't tend to go for the bleakness of the Lovecraftian approach, but I quite like the alien-horrors-whose-touch-is-caustic-to-the-everyday-world trope.

Well, in reality, I don't either. And although this is a discussion for another day, I'm not sure that Lovecraft very consistently had that bleak approach all the time either (although he certainly went through a phase of it.) I think that much of that approach is a construct of later readers and writers interpreting Lovecraft. Lovecraft's work went through phases, with similarities althrough, but also major differences in tone. Some of his later work almost leaves the horror genre behind altogether and ranges into being pure, early science fiction, for instance.

In any case, yeah--I like the caustic-alien idea of monsters. Especially outsiders and undead, which are my favorite "villains" from the monstrous ouvre. Villains of the "all too human" variety give me plenty to work with on a more day-to-day basis. And although I call my setting a dark fantasy, D&D + Cthulhu hybrid, in reality, I'm also a big fan of larger-then-life swashbuckling adventure as a major theme too.

They're not completely incompatable. The Van Helsing movie, for example, or the Brendan Frasier Mummy series hit this combination, in many ways. They weren't all very good movies in other ways (the first Mummy excepted) but I often point to them as the perfect example of the tone I want to hit, at least.

Or perhaps Harry Dresden but not in the modern world works too.

In my 4e game, the Far Realm has mostly been in the background, [...]

I tend to not use the Far Realm at all, and just assume that all monsters are actually more monstrous in nature than D&D often presents them. D&D suffers, I think, from having monsters be nearly routine (especially in a dungeoncrawling environment) which, of course, makes them not really very monstrous at all. The focus on regular human villains at more levels, of course, means that I can make monsters more rare, and therefore really play them up as monsters. Instead just being a routine hazard that PCs meet on their daily commute into work.

 

[TwoSix]

The other generalisation, though, certainly doesn't apply in my case - in fact, the more I run 4e the more I see some of its strengths - although of course its weakness also remain evident.

I agree with this. Importing my OSR game into a 4e framework made me realize again how sturdy the underlying math is, and how solid the model is of granting players a suite of rules exceptions to play with. The downside of 4e for my group is the complexity of character creation. For my game, since I was translating pre-existing characters, I ignored the class framework and simply gave the characters abilities out of the Compendium. It's working quite well, and we got to go back to the exciting 4e combat that everyone missed.

 

[Incenjucar]

<SNIP> If someone's a fan of 4e, they're probably a fan of tactical battlemat combat. Unless they're specifically interesting in 5e as something different, Theater of the Mind won't be what they're looking for.

Ease-of-use, consistency, monster-of-type variety (ten kinds of orcs), and balance between classes and builds are also main draws. Plenty of 4E DMs ditch the grid for things like "Melee, Close, Far" ranges and so on. The grid is also not exclusive to 4E, even if it is more-heavily integrated. 4E is not really defined by "tactical combat" so much as wizards aren't so overpowering that tactical combat is a waste of time.

Don't be seduced by the strawman.

 

[Desdichado]

Ease-of-use, consistency, monster-of-type variety (ten kinds of orcs), and balance between classes and builds are also main draws. Plenty of 4E DMs ditch the grid for things like "Melee, Close, Far" ranges and so on. The grid is also not exclusive to 4E, even if it is more-heavily integrated. 4E is not really defined by "tactical combat" so much as wizards aren't so overpowering that tactical combat is a waste of time.

Don't be seduced by the strawman.

It's not a strawman, it's a highly debatable claim that you've made. There's a major difference.