Speculation about "the feelz" of D&D 4th Edition

[Parmandur]

That is in no way disturbing or depressing. No sir. ;P

Now you're just contradicting yourself. One post, 'gamist abstraction' is the death of TotM, the next, it's support.

You're goin' down the "less is more" rabbit hole there, and the other side of that is "nothing is everything." ;P

Ironically, that's not nonsense: it's an argument for Freestyle RP.

I would rather play freestyle RP than 4E, though I like standard D&D just fine. [emoji14]

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[Parmandur]

I'm not sure I follow. 5e is incredibly modern and focused design as far as D&D goes, and boy does it borrow from a few indie RPGs.

Not being snarky, but as someone who fetishizes all of those things I was genuinely confused.

There is a narrative of 4E = Progress and 5E = Stagnant Regression at play; but history neither progresses nor regresses, it wobbles.

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[Parmandur]

Right, and then feet vs squares just becomes an issue of flavor, at which point why not just use feet? Its not that squares are 'bad' or would pose a problem for 5e, but if you're just going to 'wing it' anyway, then its simply excess conceptual baggage. What is telling is its exclusion largely precluded other modes of play. I guess you could sort of rehabilitate grid play into 5e in some awkward fashion, but the lack of describing AoEs and ZoCs and whatnot in terms of a grid makes it pretty clunky at best.

The DMG has guidelines for adding in some of that sort of thing for people who like it.

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[AbdulAlhazred]

To add to my previous comment (instead of editing it again), my initial observations about what made earlier editions "feel" a certain way are limited by my having to rely on the rules as written, since I have very little--well, actually, non-existent experience actually playing with the rules.

Reading the rules, I came to the conclusion that 4e dispensed with the management of the mundane, which in turn meant that the attritional aspects of the game were no longer present--at least, in the form to which they had been accustomed. There is resource management in 4e, but the resources that matter are the characters' inner qualities instead of the fear they carry.

So, imagine a B/X fighter getting separated from the group, then having his magic (talking!) sword stolen. He is going to have a difficult time, even if he manages to find or steal a weapon. It would be a question of whether he would survive the night, unless the player can figure out some clever way to leverage what his character has in his backpack to turn certain death into a fighting chance to live. In a certain way, that's awesome.

A 4e fighter in the same position could pick up a tree branch and probably be sitting on the dead body of the orc king when the rest of his party finally enters the throne room, because, in 4e, the power is inside you!--er, I mean, inside the character. In a certain way, that's awesome.

Anyway, that's the difference, as I see it.

Its interesting commentary. Certainly EARLY D&D (which I can talk about with at least some authority) was OFTEN about grubby mundane resource matters. You were expected to solve fairly pedestrian sorts of problems with chalk, ropes, iron spikes, torches, and rations. Resource management COULD be a part of this, though it was largely up to the DM in practice. The tendency was for DMs to start off with the idea of being strict, but that almost always gave way to less formal "Oh OK, you did use up your chalk last week, but you went to town and stocked up on 'stuff', so we'll assume you used your 14 WIS and got another piece." Anyway, characters in the 6th+ level range could usually solve problems with magic or class features, their mundane equipment gradually faded from real significance.

4e certainly ALLOWS you to play this same resource game, with probably a similar outcome, but it also seems to encourage abstracting it out right from the start, and its style of moving from one plot point to the other certainly doesn't automatically generate a lot of situations or conditions under which clever use of equipment is mandatory (its unlikely for instance that a 4e DM will play out an intricate scenario of characters navigating a complex maze and describing each turn and how they mark each choice they made, etc., instead it would likely be an SC where 'use chalk' is a fictional element explaining a success, perhaps a check will even indicate that the character brought chalk despite so such explicit consideration being evident in the previous fiction).

However, I think 3.5 had PRETTY well already abandoned the detailed resource game sort of play. This is indicated by the existence of an overarching skill system, which shifts the game from 'test the player' to 'test the character'. Note crucially that this system was thoroughly optional in 2e and was totally divorced from class features (except arguably in OA, but I'd note that OA was never carried over into 2e in any systematic way, it was kind of a blind alley in TSR D&D evolution). So when 4e did this it was rooted solidly in trends, material, and subsystems already present in 3.x.

Anyway, I agree it was more explicit in 4e, and the streamlined and truly functional skill system combined with its generalization into SCs and the emphasis on encounter-based design certainly pushed the game into other directions, though without actively precluding older modes of play (pure player skill test mode aside, but that went out with 3e as noted anyway).

I'm not sure I totally agree with your example. A lone B/X fighter would CERTAINLY be in a precarious situation, true. A lone 4e fighter would be in a certain fictional space. What would happen next in 4e would entirely depend on how the DM and player see the situation unfolding. The DM could indeed allow the lone fighter to succeed by himself, or he could as easily be allowed to fail! The key being that 4e's tools for encounter design provide the DM with a toolset with which to reliably produce the requisite scenarios. The fighter can be faced with simple SCs and at-level for one PC encounters, probably with a lot of minions involved, or the DM can simply play out how the orcs capture him and then when the rest of the PCs arrive rescuing him can be an element of the resulting encounter (possibly complete with his rejoining the fray and the story leading to "united we slay the orc king" or some such).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think the type of sale numbers 5e is seeing could be generated by grognards alone. I think one of the things that gets lost in these type of discussions is that 5e actually appeals to what alot of new players not just old want in their game. I think asking why it (in general) appeals to both (as opposed to disparaging it as backwards in some way) is one of the more interesting questions... My 2 cents is that "modern" design... "focused" design" and "indie" design (as commonly used by proponents of 4ed) are actually overrated and quite niche in who they appeal to. Of course this has no evidence to back it up so I could be wrong... *shrug*

It certainly didn't seem like between 2008 and 2014 when 4e was the officially supported version of D&D that there was a dearth of new players. I don't know any way to produce evidence one way or another, but certainly I've talked to and experienced many people who joined the game during 4e and when I got people into my games that were new they didn't seem to have trouble with 4e in any way that was different from grokking 2e for instance.

So its a question perhaps, but it wouldn't, IMHO be warranted to assume that 5e somehow has proven to be a vastly superior entre to D&D.

I really tend to think, as has been discussed up thread, that 4e simply fell into a point in the market cycle and economic cycle where the release of a new D&D, and certainly one that didn't cater at all to the then-popular OSR trend, was simply disfavored. I suspect that if 5e had been released in 2008 we'd be looking at an edition roll over from that now as well. There were other factors that haven't even really been discussed here too, but frankly its rather OT and not terribly relevant anymore. 5e certainly arrived at a time and in a form that was fortuitous and its marketing (or largely lack thereof) was handled without huge missteps. It is a game that is a little backwards-looking, but it provided enough contrast with 4e to let people unwind a lot of their anti-WotC rhetoric and switch from PF back to 'true' D&D. That was the goal!

 

[Parmandur]

It certainly didn't seem like between 2008 and 2014 when 4e was the officially supported version of D&D that there was a dearth of new players. I don't know any way to produce evidence one way or another, but certainly I've talked to and experienced many people who joined the game during 4e and when I got people into my games that were new they didn't seem to have trouble with 4e in any way that was different from grokking 2e for instance.

So its a question perhaps, but it wouldn't, IMHO be warranted to assume that 5e somehow has proven to be a vastly superior entre to D&D.

I really tend to think, as has been discussed up thread, that 4e simply fell into a point in the market cycle and economic cycle where the release of a new D&D, and certainly one that didn't cater at all to the then-popular OSR trend, was simply disfavored. I suspect that if 5e had been released in 2008 we'd be looking at an edition roll over from that now as well. There were other factors that haven't even really been discussed here too, but frankly its rather OT and not terribly relevant anymore. 5e certainly arrived at a time and in a form that was fortuitous and its marketing (or largely lack thereof) was handled without huge missteps. It is a game that is a little backwards-looking, but it provided enough contrast with 4e to let people unwind a lot of their anti-WotC rhetoric and switch from PF back to 'true' D&D. That was the goal!

Well, those outside factors did play a part, but as somebody who wasn't even mad, I did just stop playing RPGs after 4E, straight up entirely: my zest for it was lost, and came back with 5E. There was something to the play itself that left me wanting.

To go back upthread a little bit, I'm pretty sure we ignored wealth by level guidelines and such in 3.x as well; a lot of the codified rails like that were considered guidelines we could safely ignore. Which became untenable in 4E, but is perfectly tenable, if not assumed in 5E.

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[Imaro]

It certainly didn't seem like between 2008 and 2014 when 4e was the officially supported version of D&D that there was a dearth of new players. I don't know any way to produce evidence one way or another, but certainly I've talked to and experienced many people who joined the game during 4e and when I got people into my games that were new they didn't seem to have trouble with 4e in any way that was different from grokking 2e for instance.

I'm confused... I didn't comment on 4e one way or the other... I was responding to a specific assertion about grognards, 5e making D&D great again by "undoing everything that had been done to improve it and make it fit for the future." But since you gave XP to the post I was referring to I'd assume you had read it and had the context.

So its a question perhaps, but it wouldn't, IMHO be warranted to assume that 5e somehow has proven to be a vastly superior entre to D&D.

Well when one is directly stating or implying, as the post I was responding too did, that 5e is great for grognards, has undone everything that had been done to improve D&D and isn't a fit game for the future... I think why it is attracting younger gamers, is still popular at this point in it's release cycle and so on are very important questions to ponder... I mean if you believe it is unfit for the future and appeals to grognards... why is it attracting and retaining so many new players?

I really tend to think, as has been discussed up thread, that 4e simply fell into a point in the market cycle and economic cycle where the release of a new D&D, and certainly one that didn't cater at all to the then-popular OSR trend, was simply disfavored. I suspect that if 5e had been released in 2008 we'd be looking at an edition roll over from that now as well. There were other factors that haven't even really been discussed here too, but frankly its rather OT and not terribly relevant anymore. 5e certainly arrived at a time and in a form that was fortuitous and its marketing (or largely lack thereof) was handled without huge missteps. It is a game that is a little backwards-looking, but it provided enough contrast with 4e to let people unwind a lot of their anti-WotC rhetoric and switch from PF back to 'true' D&D. That was the goal!

But that doesn't speak to why people other then grognards are buying and playing 5e if it's a game unfit for the future that has undone everything that improved D&D and was little more than marketing and anti-WotC backlash... the type of game that describes seems like it'd be a flopeither at release or as people played it more... at least for anyone outside the grognard demographic. Again, I'm not commenting on 4e... and I didn't in the post you are responding too... I was very careful in only addressing the assertions made about 5e...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I have absolutely nothing against 4th Edition and I do wish those who don't agree with me would stop passive aggressively labelling me as a hater.

The talking points the h4ters used in the edition war were repeated ad nauseum, and the only thing you're likely to accomplish by repeating them (at least, without some new insight, like the OP had) is to tar yourself with the h4ter brush.

My contention, with evidence, Mearl's opinion, with the weight of D&D gaming history, the exodus of players and the success of Pathfinder etc, etc. ... ...that for several significant reasons needed remaking with a more recognisable (to the majority of players) version of the game.

Case in point. If you don't want to look the part of the h4ter, don't run so many plays from their book.

You clearly like 4th Edition and whilst it is stating the completely obvious, you have a great deal of material from that system to use to run games into the future - certainly more than 5th Ed. players do.

Sure, sure. And, you'll note there's virtually no edition warring going on in the 5e discussion group (at least, not against 5e).
The situation you cite was far more the case during the edition war. Fans of 3.x who felt all betrayed not only had a vast wealth of already-published material to draw upon, but the prospect of ongoing support from 3pps in perpetuity. Yet they actively warred against the current edition.

Now that 4e is dead, the only edition of the game that is both unsupported by WotC, and can't legally be cloned by anyone else, the h4ter edition warring continues.

How terrified do you have to be of something to keep shooting it in the back after it's bled out?

The irony here is that you don't like 5th Edition, which was deliberately designed to be closer to pre-4th Edition versions by WotC

Really, it's designed to be closer to the classic game: it leaves a lot of 3e-isms on the floor, too. (One of the ironies of the edition war is that 3.5/PF fans were in the trenches, fighting harder than anyone, yet 5e snubbed them almost as badly as it did 4e fans, in seeking to woo back the fans of the classic game.)

And, not coincidentally, as someone who fell in love with the classic game, I'm quite fond of 5e. It punches the ol' nostalgia buttons neatly, and, after over a decade of player-focused systems, it's a blast to run D&D with the kind of absolute power DMs enjoyed back in the day - indeed, when I run the 4e campaign I'm finishing out, I find myself increasingly edging it towards the same DMing style.

At the same time, as with every prior edition, I'm not in denial about its technical deficiencies.

but simultaneously cannot see the fundamental contradiction between that dislike of 5th Editions differences from 4th Edition and the contention that 4th was a natural development of 1 to 3.5...
... to be clear - if you don't like 5th Edition because it is closer to the pre-4th Editions, then how can you logically argue that 4th was a natural development of the editions before it?

Not my position, but it's very like the circular argument common in the edition war. H4ters claim something terrible about 4e (it's mechanics dissociate them, they can't RP, it's an MMO, etc, but when they're pressed to site the actual attributes of 4e that cause those issues, the same qualities are readily found in prior editions that they like. How then can you hate one and defend the other?

There are lots of us - Mearls claimed that the early playtest polls showed the majority of respondents felt this way - who love D&D, and aren't militantly devoted to (nor irrationally hate) a specific edition or era.

Of course, you can decide how credible you find him when he makes statements like that.

I was just throwing out my thoughts on why someone would say that 4e "felt different".
I would hear, on various fora, that 4e "didn't have the right feel", without adequate explanation why.
So, then, the question becomes "what did 4e do that previous editions did not, and vice versa?" The answer isnt, I think, "Healing Surges" and "Measurement by Squares"; there is something fundamental about the "feel" of earlier editions that 4e did not capture for some players.

The counting squares thing is funny, with the 5' square being a thing in D&D since 2e C&T (c1995), and AD&D using inches that could be 10' or 10 yards, depending.

The ways in which 4e, itself (as opposed to the market weakness and business side fiascos it was afflicted with) was different from prior (and, now, later) editions were clustered around one system quality: balance.

H4ters complained about all sorts of soft qualities that could hide behind the shield of subjectivity, but, when able to cite anything concrete at all, it was virtually always a game element that functioned to provide class or encounter balance, most often the former.

Now, balance is a desirable quality in a any game, but especially so in a complex game with a wide scope, and especially so in a cooperative game where there will be no explicit winner, so being - both of which are likely aspects of an RPG.

That is, desirable unless you're intent on 'winning' a cooperative game by cracking the system, dominating play, or outright ruining the experience for others. D&D had been a very poorly balanced game for a long time, so it's long-time fans had either learned to cope with and compensate for that downside - or to embrace and leverage it. Either way, suddenly playing a much better-balanced version of the same game presented challenges and challenged expectations.

One more thing that may have an impact on the feel of earlier editions: the first few editions of the game weren't just rules for dungeon crawling or having adventures, they were rules for building a particular sort of shared world.

Yeah... no. There's a lot of high-minded retro-nostalgic psuedo-analysis and revisionist history muddying the waters of the classic game, let alone the original game. And the one you cite sounds like it's in that sea of turbidity.

No, early D&D was not intentionally rules for building a shared world. It was rules for dungeon-crawling, wilderness-exploration, treasure-hunting, magic and combat, some of those a lot more detailed than others, the whole of them not in the least consistent in design paradigm.

But, it /is/ true that, if you took them seriously enough, they started to imply things about the world for whom they'd act as de-facto laws of physics. But that's true of any RPG ruleset, even those that go out of their way trying to be 'generic.'

The one example cited by your source, though, level limits, in addition to being an unsuccessful attempt to balance the multi-classing rules over many levels, was a case where Gygax came right out and said he was intentionally trying to evoke the fantasy genre, said genre being humanocentric in spite of featuring super-human races.

Ironically, level-limits were one of the most unpopular and ignored of rules, with 2e raising those limits substantially, and 3e dropping the whole thing entirely (and, you'll notice, it's one thing 5e hasn't brought back).

I'm not sure I follow. 5e is incredibly modern and focused design as far as D&D goes,

D&D went about as far as the early 90s. ;P

Seriously, 4e would have been a revolutionary game if it had been published before Over the Edge, for instance. d20, had it been published in the 80s, before open-source was a thing, would have been a solid core system, a worthy rival to Chaosium BRP and GURPS.

and boy does it borrow from a few indie RPGs.

Bonds/Flaws & Inspiration is the kind of RP-carrot I recall from early predecessors of modern indie games. Aside from that?

Not being snarky, but as someone who fetishizes all of those things I was genuinely confused.

Of course, I'm a grognard in my own way, and am probably much more tuned to the classic-D&Disms of 5e.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm confused... I didn't comment on 4e one way or the other... I was responding to a specific assertion about grognards, 5e making D&D great again by "undoing everything that had been done to improve it and make it fit for the future." But since you gave XP to the post I was referring to I'd assume you had read it and had the context.



Well when one is directly stating or implying, as the post I was responding too did, that 5e is great for grognards, has undone everything that had been done to improve D&D and isn't a fit game for the future... I think why it is attracting younger gamers, is still popular at this point in it's release cycle and so on are very important questions to ponder... I mean if you believe it is unfit for the future and appeals to grognards... why is it attracting and retaining so many new players?



But that doesn't speak to why people other then grognards are buying and playing 5e if it's a game unfit for the future that has undone everything that improved D&D and was little more than marketing and anti-WotC backlash... the type of game that describes seems like it'd be a flopeither at release or as people played it more... at least for anyone outside the grognard demographic. Again, I'm not commenting on 4e... and I didn't in the post you are responding too... I was very careful in only addressing the assertions made about 5e...

Yeah, the idea that 5E is somehow "only for grognards" does seem fairly bizarre, given the general popularity among new players (most of the folks I know playing); or that is "unfit for the future" which flies in the face of it's continued growth and flourishing. False narratives of progress and reaction are not helpful.

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[Imaro]

Yeah, the idea that 5E is somehow "only for grognards" does seem fairly bizarre, given the general popularity among new players (most of the folks I know playing); or that is "unfit for the future" which flies in the face of it's continued growth and flourishing. False narratives of progress and reaction are not helpful.

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The real hypocrisy is that if those same things were posted about 4e, even in the 5e forums, you'd have 4e fans claiming it was just edition war rhetoric... ands it would probably be some of the same ones that XP'd the post...