D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[overgeeked]

Board game rules these days are a few pages and tend to be brightly colored. Big text as well. More of a pamphlet vs a book.

Man, that would be amazing for RPGs. Oh, wait, there's a whole subset of RPGs that already do that. And they're amazing. And they have every bit as much story as the crunchier RPGs. What they lack is crunch.

And board games typically have minimal story

Depends entirely on the board game. Tales of the Arabian Nights, for example, has far more story than many D&D games I've played in. And that assumes, wrongly, that all RPGs are heavy on story. That's not the case at all.

It further depends on where you think the story is in regards to RPGs. If there is any story at all, the story is emergent from actually playing the game. The story of an RPG is not in the manual. It's in your head and the heads of the other players around the table. You don't need multiple 350-page books for that.

and are completely different medium.

Yes, one that RPGs...especially tabletop RPGs...could learn a lot from in terms of design and writing. Especially of rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thats very true. While some folks want the material to tell you how it is played, some folks want that to be left up to them to decide.

Yeah, I don't really want to play an RPG that use the mechanics to enforce playstyle, at least not much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No more so than any other edition of D&D. I'd reject any assertion that singles it out.

4e fans often reject any assertion that singles it out.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, I don't really want to play an RPG that use the mechanics to enforce playstyle, at least not much.

That's a weird claim coming from someone who plays a bunch of them. That's the OSR's schtick. The mechanics of OSR games very much point to and enforce a particular playstyle.

 

[soviet]

Yeah, I don't really want to play an RPG that use the mechanics to enforce playstyle, at least not much.

Literally every RPG does this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's a weird claim coming from someone who plays a bunch of them. That's the OSR's schtick. The mechanics of OSR games very much point to and enforce a particular playstyle.

I suppose that's true. I guess what I mean is they don't enforce narrative mechanically. That's where I have a problem.

 

[overgeeked]

I suppose that's true. I guess what I mean is they don't enforce narrative mechanically. That's where I have a problem.

I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make. The narrative of a game, i.e. the story, is emergent from playing the game...the mechanics push game play in particular directions...so whatever story emerges from play is largely guided by the mechanics. Do you mean like storygames where mechanics push things like scene framing, narrative arcs, act structure, etc?

 

[Zehnseiter]

4e's unforgivable sin was that it was too transparent.

Oh so true. But looking back I love 4E for it. No other D&D edition and very few other RPGs teached me so much about rule mechanics as 4E.
My old D&D editions (including 5E currently) are collecting dust on my shelves. Some 4E books I still pull out from time to time for reference and looking stuff up.

They help me doing paid rules feedback for a completely different RPG that has nothing to do with D&D. I probably wouldn't even have that little side job if 4E wasn't as open with showing its inner mechanics.

I play very few D&D these days (well with the exception of Baldur's Gate 3 currently) as I am busy with different games but looking back the most influential D&D things for me are AD&D 2E settings and 4E mechanics.

 

[deganawida]

Honestly, just the fundamental portrayal of the World Axis cosmology with its core conflict between gods and primordials is vastly more gameable and interesting in a plot sense than the eternal, unchanging, forever-balance, of the GW cosmology with its implication that nothing you can ever do actually matters much. I never understood what was so interesting about that. Its literally antithetical to the very spirit of Fantasy Adventure.

Well, in fairness, when I first read it, I thought they borrowed too liberally from Exalted’s Creation settings.

Said it before, will say it again: Exalted has a great hook, fantastic setting, but the rules are DAUNTING. And that’s me understating it.

 

[soviet]

Oh so true. But looking back I love 4E for it. No other D&D edition and very few other RPGs teached me so much about rule mechanics as 4E.

Oh for sure. I hope my hyperbole was transparent - I loved 4e. I think there were some places where the foundations were slightly too transparent (naked might be the correct word), but as an instruction manual and reference it was generally very clear.