With 5e here, what will 4e be remembered for?

[Obryn]

I could quite easily post a raft of criticism about 3E too - but it wouldn’t create a whole massive thread of people defending it as if I’d insulted them personally

Hahaha, stick around a bit.

 

[Minigiant]

One other thing 4e will be known for is opening showing us all that D&D fandom is huge but he all don't like the same things and many of us dislike certain D&D tropes.

That D&D is a real fan source like sports fan who hate and love different players. Go to any team site when a starter is traded. 4e showed us all that we are a real fan base, and a big one.

 

[wingsandsword]

The oddity for me is why, given all the RPGs in the world that people don't play, so many non-4e players felt (and still seem to feel) compelled to explain not only that they don't play, but why they don't play, and why those who do play are making some sort of suboptimal aesthetic judgement (eg sacrificing "simulation" for "gamism").

Because it wasn't just another RPG, it was D&D.

Throughout the history of D&D, as new editions have come out, the general consensus of the D&D player base has been, over time, to migrate to the new edition.

OD&D gave way to AD&D, which gave way to AD&D 2e, which gave way to D&D 3e, which gave way to D&D 3.5. Yeah, you'd get some holdouts to older editions, but the substantial majority switched over without a lot of fuss. Some sooner, some later, but most all of them in time.

In the pre-release marketing materials for 4e, WotC not only acknowledged this, they admitted were COUNTING on it, they pretty much assumed that no matter how they changed D&D, the broad consensus of the D&D player base would adopt it over time because it was D&D. The metaphor they used was to a long-running rock band that put out an album with a really different sound, that the fans of the band would still buy the new album and listen to it. The problem with that metaphor that WotC built 4e on was that that a music album is maybe $15, and is mostly a passive experience of listening, while a new D&D edition is hundreds (or thousands) of dollars worth of buy-in over years, and hundreds of hours of interactive gaming over those years.

4e was such a radical shift, that while it held the name D&D, it didn't look, feel or play the same to many/most players. Whereas previous editions built incrementally on each other (1e to 2e, 3e to 3.5e) or at least tried to retain much of the overall feel even if the mechanics changed (2e to 3e), 4e wasn't an incremental change and it didn't try to retain any of the prior feel of D&D, instead being a completely unrelated game with the "Dungeons and Dragons" name attached. Even if the game was well balanced, well written, and could be enjoyable to play, the divergence in play style as well as the complete jettisoning of around 3 decades of accumulated D&D meta-setting like the Great Wheel meant that if not for the "D&D" name on it, you wouldn't even think it was the same game.

The cultural presumption of adopting the new edition was shattered. If you look back at old threads from circa 2008 the 4e adopters were befuddled as to why people weren't switching over and wanted explanations as to why they wouldn't automatically adopt the new edition of D&D (a lot of early Edition War threads really did start with 4e adopters questioning why 3e players weren't switching, like the automatic presumption was that all D&D players would move over).

That's why people explain it, because when the Edition Wars broke out, it was largely over the presumption that the new edition of D&D replaces the old one, and people move over to the new edition, and that position has framed the view of 4e for a lot of people since then. Adherents to 3.x D&D who reject the radical changes that came with 4e felt both spurned by the process, and excluded from D&D by the changes to the game they love taking a direction away.

There you go, a lot of the root of the edition wars and why they are framed as more than just a dislike of one RPG over another.

 

[SteveC]

For me, 4E will be remembered as that On Brief Shining Moment where Martial characters had a seat at the same table as everyone else.

I was just going through my binder of 4E characters, and I discovered that I never actually played a wizard in that edition! For me, that's really saying something: I like complex characters who can do a lot of different things in all parts of the game. The fact that my most memorable character in 4E was a rogue, is... extraordinary.

I suspect that later on in the 5E life cycle that fair time may come again...

 

[pemerton]

I could quite easily post a raft of criticism about 3E too - but it wouldn’t create a whole massive thread of people defending it as if I’d insulted them personally

Look at the post just above yours. I've never heard of anyone entering thread after thread about 3E to explain that it's not really an RPG at all.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There have definitely been people saying "all HP damage above 0 is abstract". But I'm certainly ok with just because people say something doesn't mean everyone on the same side of the debate agrees with every specific item.

Abstract surely isn't the same as "never meat". Why do you think it is?

I agree with you here. Except that, for me, the Warlord goes much too far in making the cut irrelevant. Temp HP would be a far better solution for me. I'd even be OK with some system of capped healing (never above 50%, for example, though not meant to exclude other ideas). If a fighter with 100 HP was hit 10 times for a total of 57 damage, would you limit the Warlord to healing only 47, leaving the 1 HP/ hit as actual injury?

I think THP are a pretty annoying mechanic in every edition so I avoid them. The latter suggestion is a fine optional rule, but needlessly fiddly for normal play, imho.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For me, 4E will be remembered as that On Brief Shining Moment where Martial characters had a seat at the same table as everyone else.

I was just going through my binder of 4E characters, and I discovered that I never actually played a wizard in that edition! For me, that's really saying something: I like complex characters who can do a lot of different things in all parts of the game. The fact that my most memorable character in 4E was a rogue, is... extraordinary.

I suspect that later on in the 5E life cycle that fair time may come again...

Yep. It did in 3.5E, just shortly before the end. I expect it to come sooner in 5E.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Look at the post just above yours. I've never heard of anyone entering thread after thread about 3E to explain that it's not really an RPG at all.

I don’t think 3E was a RPG at all. I think it was a botched marketing scheme.

Seriously, I think 3E was an attempt to consolidate the gaming community by looking at the games that it had been competing with and integrate these influences into it’s own game. The major influence, via Jonathan Tweet’s stewardship, was RuneQuest/BRP based games although a lot of others can be cited too. Hence we saw a fully integrated skill system, multi-classing galore and the notion of a universal system that could be fitted to all genres (the D20 system and the OGL). There was also a business model founded on, yes, selling lots of miniatures and core rules books, while getting other companies to produce the less profitable things, like adventure modules.

And it worked at first, but started to fall apart a bit on the grounds that a) the integration of new subsystems became convoluted, so that game as a whole felt a lot more complicated than previous editions, and b) independent publishers didn’t quite do what they were expected and started finding loopholes in the OGL contract to start producing alternative core rules and such. Some other game designers, players and companies always resented the notion of a one-size-fits-all universal system, anyway.

Now we could see all this as a big corporate melt down, but it is worth remembering that - for a short time at least - 3rd Edition actually did bring a lot of D&D players back into the fold, and it was a unifying thing. The d20 drive actually got new gaming companies and products up and running, and even some websites like ENWorld lest we forget. Prior to 3rd Edition, D&D had been struggling for a few years as had the RPG hobby in totality. People were all doom and gloom - it was a dying hobby we were told (the biggest RPG success story of the 90s was the World of Darkness, which is possibly symbolic of the way gamers felt.…). Then 3E came along and got everything buzzing again.

How does this compare to 4E? Well again, I think 4E was a product of it’s time - but this time it was influenced by factors such as the growing ‘Indie’ movement, as well as MMOs such as World of Warcraft. There was also the sense that the game had become very bloated with subsystems and that gameplay design should be more structured and specific in its goals. These were fairly noble sentiments, but a lot of it was rushed through in it’s marketing and play testing and did not seem to give two hoots about the game’s past legacy at all - ‘killing off sacred cows’, etc. There was also knee-jerk reaction about PDF support and the whole OGL aspect of the game, which had an impact on lots of game companies beyond Wizards. It brought to a head much of the underlying tensions in the RPG community that had existed for a while - the whole 3E/4E ‘War’’ was preceded somewhat by the bitter arguments circulating 'Indie vs Traditional' game design before, while the dropping sales around the time of the 2007-8 crash was also raising consternation.

So, I don’t think 4E was evil and I don’t view it with hate. I think, like 3E, it was a product of it’s time. Thankfully however, it’s time is done. Long live 5E!

 

[pemerton]

4e was such a radical shift, that while it held the name D&D, it didn't look, feel or play the same to many/most players. Whereas previous editions built incrementally on each other (1e to 2e, 3e to 3.5e) or at least tried to retain much of the overall feel even if the mechanics changed (2e to 3e), 4e wasn't an incremental change and it didn't try to retain any of the prior feel of D&D, instead being a completely unrelated game with the "Dungeons and Dragons" name attached.

This is utterly contentious. Both the many/most - no reliable public polling has been done, and there is no evidence I'm aware of that suggests that 4e players were/are less than half the total player base, let alone significantly less.

That 3E was an "incremental change", and that 4e "didn't try to retain any of the prior feel of D&D" is likewise contentious - I know I'm not the only player who returned to D&D for 4e because it did a better job than any earlier edition of capturing the prior feel of D&D. (Whereas 3E is a dramatic change from classic D&D, in my view.)

TL;DR: the explanation for the "edition wars" isn't that those who dislike 4e were right.

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t think 3E was a RPG at all. I think it was a botched marketing scheme.

Wait a sec. Make 3e in a way that in the later days fans are constantly complaining. Then make 4e with the solutions turned up to eleven and inflexible. Then make 5e. It'll like they are not being perfect on purpose.

Those sneaky guys are trying to get my money.