D&D 4E Is there any 4e Retro Clones out there?

[Rechan]

I've been absent, became a Fate fanboy/gave up on RPGs. But, occasionally, you want to kick in the door, slay some monsters, and do it with Encounter powers while wearing a role. (Or imagine you do while having the book in a shelf, not playing).

So, older editions of D&D got Castles and Crusades, DCC, and so on. 3e got Pathfinder. I'm wondering, has anyone basically remade the 4th Edition Wheel?

If there are, or any that are close enough to be interesting, can you give a little info about them?

 

[Celebrim]

4e isn't covered by the OGL, and it's very much its own creature. I'd think it was sufficiently different to all other D&D editions as to have incompatibility issues. To be honest, I'm often surprised how tolerant WotC has been of remaking 1e material. I suspect that the amount of outright copying you'd need to remake 4e would trigger a response by WotC.

Also, 4e for all its problems was at least a very tightly interconnected system. What would you change?

Also, to be quite frank, I don't think there is very much demand for new 4e material. It's got a small fan base, and it's only been off the market for a few years. In many cases, it's easy to find brand new 4e material still on shelves or at used book stores.

 

[Nagol]

You should check with [MENTION=93857]C4[/MENTION] - he claimed his clone was complete a few years ago. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ition-Clone!&p=5880713&viewfull=1#post5880713

It doesn't look like he's posted here for about a year though and I think the files were only available on request.

 

[Rechan]

You should check with [MENTION=93857]C4[/MENTION] - he claimed his clone was complete a few years ago. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ition-Clone!&p=5880713&viewfull=1#post5880713

It doesn't look like he's posted here for about a year though and I think the files were only available on request.

I was hoping for an actual product that other people would be able to buy, et al, instead of just a fan creation. But thanks!

 

[Manbearcat]

I was hoping for an actual product that other people would be able to buy, et al, instead of just a fan creation. But thanks!

Check out Strike , but I would highly, highly recommend Dungeon World as well.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've been absent, became a Fate fanboy/gave up on RPGs.

Lol. You make it sound like taking up FATE is giving up on RPGs! ;P

So, older editions of D&D got Castles and Crusades, DCC, and so on. 3e got Pathfinder. I'm wondering, has anyone basically remade the 4th Edition Wheel?

No.

All those are d20 clones based on the OGL. The OGL doesn't work for 4e and the GSL doesn't allow re-printing of core material the way the OGL does.

If there are, or any that are close enough to be interesting, can you give a little info about them?

13th Age is close enough to FATE to be interesting, as well as close enough to 4e and to classic D&D to get you that dungeon-crawling vibe. But it's in no way a clone of 4e. It's really much more like what 5e said it was trying to be - evoking the feel of classic D&D with modern mechanics, faster combats, and support for TotM style play.

I was hoping for an actual product that other people would be able to buy, et al, instead of just a fan creation. But thanks!

At most, you get a few 4e-compatible OGL products coming down the line (and they're usually only nominally for 4e - setting products that are usable with both 3e/PF or 4e/D&D or with just about anything because there's no mechanics involved). The GSL is apparently a very unfavorable license and only a very few 3pps were willing to use it even when 4e was the current ed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

At most, you get a few 4e-compatible OGL products coming down the line (and they're usually only nominally for 4e - setting products that are usable with both 3e/PF or 4e/D&D or with just about anything because there's no mechanics involved). The GSL is apparently a very unfavorable license and only a very few 3pps were willing to use it even when 4e was the current ed.

GSL really is a very LENIENT license, OGL just spoiled people. Very few systems allow even supplements or adventures to be written by 3PPs. You CAN write 4e material of any sort, it just can't reuse terms and material from WotC publications. There's been a decent amount of pretty good stuff, but clearly with 4e no longer a current product there is less demand, and any 3PP is going to go where the most players are, which is PF or 5e nowadays.

It would be HARD to make a 'retro clone' of 4e, but maybe not impossible. Its just not a subject of nostalgia, we still HAVE 4e. People make retro clones of 1e and older editions because the originals are hard to find or are more expensive. More than that though OD&D and Basic and its ilk were games of homebrew and variants, and most retro clones are variants more than anything.

A 'variant of 4e' is just pretty much a modernistic d20 type game.

 

[Gadget]

The GSL is apparently a very unfavorable license and only a very few 3pps were willing to use it even when 4e was the current ed.

One of the main problems was not the GSL itself, but rather that third party products had no way of integrating with the online character builder and other tools that many 4e fans found easy and convenient to use, thereby making them far less appealing than WOTC offerings. There were other problems for sure, but I remember some third party companies complaining specifically about this particular problem, along with comments made by fans that expressed little interest in buying things that could not be easily integrated into the on (or off) line tools.

 

[Rechan]

Lol. You make it sound like taking up FATE is giving up on RPGs! ;P

More like I like Fate a lot, but have given up on RPGs for the most part due to non-system related factors.

A 'variant of 4e' is just pretty much a modernistic d20 type game.

I was hoping someone might have "fixed" it. Streamlined it, addressed various problems, etc, while still able to use those old books/not make the old stuff rubbish (i.e. a nice 3.0 to 3.5 comparison). Too much to hope for, I suppose. But it looks like nothing's going to have the loose out-of-combat element with strong in-combat powers/grid system. Well Strike tries but...

Has WotC removed all the 4e stuff from the online tools/discontinued it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

More like I like Fate a lot, but have given up on RPGs for the most part due to non-system related factors.



I was hoping someone might have "fixed" it. Streamlined it, addressed various problems, etc, while still able to use those old books/not make the old stuff rubbish (i.e. a nice 3.0 to 3.5 comparison). Too much to hope for, I suppose. But it looks like nothing's going to have the loose out-of-combat element with strong in-combat powers/grid system. Well Strike tries but...

Has WotC removed all the 4e stuff from the online tools/discontinued it?

No, you can still sign up for DDI and access everything. They've obviously canned their entire community entirely, and the 4e DDI is now in a low-visibility section of their web site, but it still works fine.

Many of us have done our own streamlining and rebuilding around 4e concepts, myself included, but its NOT 4e. Its not likely to ever see the light of day either except in my living room. I'm just not a publisher or designer or any such thing and haven't anything like the time or energy or knowledge that would be needed to make a game system and actually even give it away in credible fashion.