D&D 4E Edition Experience - Did/Do You Play 4th Edition D&D? How Was/Is it?

[Ruin Explorer]

Interestingly enough, I didn't run it like a typical 4e, and that's probably a reason why I enjoyed it so much. I focused on set piece battles instead of attrition combat and used Skill Challenges extensively, even in lieu of throw-away combats.

Wait, is this not how you were supposed to run 4E? I ran 4E that way, and I kinda assumed everyone did.

Now I admit clearly not everyone at WotC did, because stuff like Keep on the Shadowfell (another crime against adventure-writing - though in this case merely a rough mugging in an alley, not the serial-killer-spree that Faction War was) was just absolute drivel with loads of pointless, boring fights in it, but that and most of the WotC 4E adventures I saw were badly designed on multiple levels (not just the mechanical!), so I sort of assumed that was why.

The WoW influence I think was a total misreading of the market. While there is significant crossover between D&D players, at least at the time, and MMO players, Hasbro banked too much on that trend thinking it was the future. It was a mistake that even Ryan Dancey made. To many people listened to Dancey a little too religiously after the success of the D20 System License and OGL when he kept harping on and on about WoW and other MMOs and trying to capture that audience.

As I've explained, there wasn't any actual WoW influence on 4E's design, themes, or setting, on a factual level.

However, I think Dancey's comments (note: he didn't work at WotC at this point - hadn't since 2002) did inspire some people to assume that there was such an influence, and having not really played WoW, nor in many cases 4E, just thought it was there (it's an honest mistake, on a certain level).

 

[pemerton]

I think the general design would have been better applied to a different underlying property, possibly different genre, without the history and expectations D&D carried with it.

If 4e had been released under some other name, it probably would have had a much more positive and less divisive reception.

As claims about marketing or publishing strategy, I can't agree with these. WotC sold a lot of 4e D&D stuff. It's hard to imagine that a game with a different name and different (ie non-legacy) fiction would have done anywhere near as well.

As claims about design I also don't agree. Here is Tom Moldvay's Foreword to his Basic D&D (dated 3 December 1980):

I was busy rescuing the captured maiden when the dragon showed up. Fifty feet of scaled terror glared down at us with smoldering red eyes. Tendrils of smoke drifted from between fangs larger than daggers. The dragon blocked the only exit from the cave. . . .

I unwrapped the sword which the mysterious cleric had given me. The sword was golden-tinted steel. Its hlt was set with a rainbow collection of precious gems. I shouted my battle cry and charged.

My charge caught the dragon by surprise. Its titanic jaws snapped shut inches from my face. I swung the golden sword with both arms. The swordblade bit into the dragon's neck and continued through to the other side. With an earth-shaking crash, the dragon dropped dead at my feet. The magic sword had saved my life and ended the reign of the dragon-tyrant. The countryside was freed and I could return as a hero.​

The only version of D&D I've played that regularly and reliably delivers this sort of experience is 4e:

* It has a magic-item acquisition system which means that items can be gifts of mysterious clerics just as much as they are loot taken from defeated foes;

* It has very clear rules in which dragons block exits from caves;

* It has warrior PCs with abilities that can make their battle cries and their charges surprise and dismay foes in the sort of way that Moldvay describes;

* It has reaction/interrupt-type abilities which allow a dragon's jaws to snap shut barely missing a warrior whose charge is still being resolved;

* It allows rescuing the maiden and freeing the countryside as victory conditions (via quest and skill challenge XP) independent of killing and/or looting the dragon.​

I appreciate that different people have different conceptions of what D&D is about and how it should play, but in my mind there is no doubt that 4e - both its fiction and its play - fits squarely within D&D tradition.

 

[Umbran]

As claims about marketing or publishing strategy, I can't agree with these.

My statement had nothing to do with marketing or publishing strategy. It was about making an enjoyable game. I think the system design didn't work so well for the fiction and material they applied it to.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I appreciate that different people have different conceptions of what D&D is about and how it should play, but in my mind there is no doubt that 4e - both its fiction and its play - fits squarely within D&D tradition.

Quite. I think part of the issue here is between D&D as described, and D&D as played.

I was attracted to D&D because of how it was described, which basically amounted to "a playable fantasy novel which goes on forever", and there was some truth in that, but even 2E, which I dearly loved, the realities of the actual rules of the game meant that the amount of truth was limited.

Some people, I think, were never looking for a "playable fantasy novel", they loved D&D for what it was, as grimy and squalid and cheesy as it could often be. So when they see 4E, to them, it's whole deal doesn't look right. They aren't having a "hilarious" discussion about how they should murder a goblin for 15 more XP. They aren't getting every magic item by prizing it out of someone's cold, dead hands. They aren't instantly getting killed by a bad roll at level 1. And for a lot of people that apparently sucked. Pathfinder provided all of that in spades, though.

I'm not making accusations here. I know plenty of people disliked or liked 4E for different reasons entirely. But I do think there was a bit of that going on.

It was about making an enjoyable game. I think the system design didn't work so well for what the applied it to.

I don't really agree, but getting past that, what do you think it would have been well-suited for? I mean, to me, it looks superbly suited to high/heroic fantasy and it's hard to think of an IP it matches better than D&D (for perhaps obvious reasons). Even re-imagining the classes and so on, it's clearly a game designed for adventuring in a high/heroic fantasy world, I'd say.

It's certainly not at all well-suited to things like superheroes, or urban intrigue, or the like.

Actually wait, let me step that back. Superheroes would be terrible, but actually moderate-fantasy urban intrigue stuff which was very combat-focused, a sort of Blades in the Dark/Dishonored-type setting could probably work pretty well for it. Better though than high/heroic fantasy? I'm not sure about that.

You know what, I can think of one setting 4E could have done better than D&D - Earthdawn. 4E instantly reminded me of Earthdawn (a staggeringly amazing game when it came out, btw), and that vibe never entirely went away. That's very much high/heroic fantasy in the D&D mould. I also think it might have been good as a Planescape-specific RPG, like "D&D: Planescape" the RPG - 4E would have done that masterfully.

Wow that was actually an interesting thing to think about, but I'm interested if you have anything to add too!

 

[humble minion]

Without derailing the thread, is anyone aware of a summary/history/postmortem of 4e, the 4e design and development process/philosophy/evolution/other events etc from an insider's point of view, by Ryan Dancey or anyone else who in the know about what was happening WotC at the time? I was completely unaware of the awful events around the VTT development team, for instance, and some of the design decisions that rankled me at the time make a lot more sense in retrospect if 4e was designed from the ground up with the VTT as an expected integral part of play.

The rise of 4e corresponded to a long D&D hiatus on my part (for reasons that had nothing to do with 4e or any other edition) so I'm aware I probably missed a lot of the history of why things were the way they were. If anyone could point me at an informed summary or overview, that'd really be appreciated.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

from an insider's point of view, by Ryan Dancey

Dancey wasn't an insider on 4E dude. I don't know why two people in this thread have thought he was now. He left WotC in 2002. He was working at CCP games (possibly not even in the US?) at the time 4E was made.

That said I'd be fascinated by an actual insider account, sadly I don't know of any!

It was definitely designed with the VTT intended to be integrated from the get-go. You can see that in the very first video they put out about 4E (before the events). How integrated would be an interesting question though.

 

[Lanefan]

When 4e came out I bought and read through the core three books, even though I'd been rather put off by both the marketing approach (as others have noted above, but I could live with bad marketing) and the release approach (everything is core and therefore not everything is in these first three books, we're saving some for later - this really torqued me off).

On reading through the books I quickly realized this wasn't the system for me but it took me a while to realize why: there's just no way to make it 'gritty' or 'non-heroic' without completely overhauling it. The jump in abilities etc. between commoner and 1st-level character could be filled by three or four character levels, for example, instead of starting them out as heroes and going from there.

Resources came back far too quickly (this is also a problem in 5e), meaning mid-to-long term attrition went out the window as a DM option.

I also didn't like the idea of minions from the get-go (particularly for big monsters), nor the somewhat-related underlying premise that things in the fiction worked one way when PCs were present and another way when they were not. In this and other ways 4e went heavy on a PC-centric "this is a game" aspect while downplaying or ignoring the idea of living breathing internally-consistent settings.

The final nail in the coffin came when I looked through the PHB with an eye to "how do I make character concept X or Y or Z in this system, as written" and realized that for two out of the three I had in mind I just couldn't see how to do it and the third would be at best a very vague approximation.

Since then I've bought and converted some 4e adventures. From this I learned two things about 4e design - one good, one bad. The good is that 4e does big intricate set-piece battles better than anything else I've seen, and I've liberally stolen ideas and concepts for my homebrew adventures. The bad goes back to the PC/NPC inconsistencies - if a foe has a magic item that's used against the PCs then the PCs should be able to loot it on defeating said foe and make it work for them.

4e was not without its moments of brilliance, however.

Bloodied as a mechanic is excellent; and could easily - and IMO should - be ported to all other editions, either roughly as-is or reskinned into a body-fatigue or wound-vitality hit points system.

Forced-movement in combat was a good addition when not overused, as it made terrain and positioning so much more of a factor.

And the concept of 'points of light' as a setting basis, where the world is a dark foreboding place and the few places of civilization stand out as beacons of hope etc. - great stuff!

 

[teitan]

As I've explained, there wasn't any actual WoW influence on 4E's design, themes, or setting, on a factual level.

However, I think Dancey's comments (note: he didn't work at WotC at this point - hadn't since 2002) did inspire some people to assume that there was such an influence, and having not really played WoW, nor in many cases 4E, just thought it was there (it's an honest mistake, on a certain level).

Were you a designer and had ears on Hasbro's directives in the design process?

I think Dancey's comments were for sure a huge influence on 4e design and how WOTC approached the game. While he wasn't at the company anymore at the time, he was well known to be able to spot trends and with how WoW and other online RPGs were dominating the market in those days. Everyone was developing an MMO, WOTC had DDO and Neverwinter was in the pipeline. I think it is wrong to, unless you were a part of the team, to say MMOs had no influence on the design. It was certainly designed for VTT play.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Were you a designer and had ears on Hasbro's directives in the design process?

Sorry, you're claiming 4E had "WoW influence". It's on you to prove it does. I've debunked the main theory people who haven't played much WoW typically use (especially people who know nothing about WoW circa 2005-2007, i.e. when 4E was being designed). It is completely on you to show WoW influence. You are equally claiming you "had ears" on the design process.

If you have any actual examples/evidence of "WoW influence", please present them. Otherwise it's just waffle.

I think Dancey's comments were for sure a huge influence on 4e design and how WOTC approached the game.

He didn't even work there. How are you not understanding this? He worked at an different company that wasn't even based in the US, had a rivalry with WotC (CCP games, who owned White Wolf among other things) and whilst it had US offices, they were thousands of miles (2600 miles to be precise) from the WotC offices. Literally on the other side of the country, and working for a rival company.

That you think he "had influence" and "had ears" on the process is not something that makes any rational sense. He left WotC in 2002, and not even on good terms!

Further, he was working for an MMO company. CCP ran EVE Online.

This is astonishing.

 

[3catcircus]

@Ruin Explorer has a good point. A lot of people have an axe to grind with the way the game was marketed and distributed, and with other decisions that were made around that same time.

I remember that there concerns of online piracy around the time that 4th Edition was released, and that might have prompted WotC to pull a lot of their digital content. And Paizo released their Pathfinder playtest material just a few months prior to 4E's release, which might have prompted WotC to remove all OGL-compatible materials. The press conferences and announcements had a weird flex to them that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And so on.

A lot of big decisions were made at WotC in 2008, and few of them were popular. It's unfair, but it clearly affected peoples' opinions of the 4th Edition D&D product.

I forgot the whole GSL debacle for 4e. They bit themselves in the rear-end with the GSL because (I don't recall if it ended up being done in practice) they were demanding that 3PP who were doing 3.x stuff under the OGL needed to stop using the OGL for non-4e products if they wanted to develop 4e products under the GSL. They learned their lesson, obviously, because 5e is under an OGL also.