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

[Zeromaru X]

That isn't what fantasyland means. Not to me anyway.

That's your fantasyland. And that's is ok. But my sources of inspiration for my fantasyland seem to be different from the ones people here draw inspiration from.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

 

[pemerton]

It fought against if you weren't interested in playing it in a vanilla narrative style, which I know is how you played 4e.

Well AD&D fights against you if you are interested in that. I know, I was there!

4e was designed in an attempt to reduce class disparity, and make multiclassing far less friendly- class levels no longer existed as building blocks for your character's final form; you couldn't be a Fighter 2/Wizard 5; instead you either had to commit to a hybrid class or spend feats to gain some abilities of a different class. Balanced rules and character abilities were (at least initially), very important to it's design. The downside of this was that the game was intended to work the way it was made (for the most part) and deviations would cause problems with that design.

<snip>

4e wasn't designed to be modded. Oh you could create your own monsters, to be sure, but how many people felt comfortable modifying the game itself?

I'm broadly with @Mannahnin here.

I mean, if "modding" means I make whatever changes I want to this with no expected change in the basic play experience then it would seem that no RPG can be modded, because some change will affect the experience.

What I tend to feel is that "can be modded* means this RPG presupposes that the GM will mediate or calibrate the experience, probably in real time, and so if the GM changes the rule system they will still be playing that mediation/calibration role, and hence the modifications won't reveal themselves because though they change the input, the output is still sitting on the other side of the GM.

And I think it's absolutely true that 4e does not assume that the GM needs to mediate or calibrate in real time in order to deliver the play experience. It's not an RPG in which the game is (or is close to being) the GM.

Which takes me back to these two propositions being different ones:

*The GM is discouraged from using pre-conceived fiction to shut down mechanically permissible action declarations;

*The fiction doesn't matter.​

The decentring of the GM as curator of the play experience seems to me to be the most fundamental reason why many RPGers did and do not like 4e D&D.

 

[darjr]

Well AD&D fights against you if you are interested in that. I know, I was there!

I'm broadly with @Mannahnin here.

I mean, if "modding" means I make whatever changes I want to this with no expected change in the basic play experience then it would seem that no RPG can be modded, because some change will affect the experience.

What I tend to feel is that "can be modded* means this RPG presupposes that the GM will mediate or calibrate the experience, probably in real time, and so if the GM changes the rule system they will still be playing that mediation/calibration role, and hence the modifications won't reveal themselves because though they change the input, the output is still sitting on the other side of the GM.

And I think it's absolutely true that 4e does not assume that the GM needs to mediate or calibrate in real time in order to deliver the play experience. It's not an RPG in which the game is (or is close to being) the GM.

Which takes me back to these two propositions being different ones:

*The GM is discouraged from using pre-conceived fiction to shut down mechanically permissible action declarations;​

​

*The fiction doesn't matter.​

The decentring of the GM as curator of the play experience seems to me to be the most fundamental reason why many RPGers did and do not like 4e D&D.

Eh. I run games for the players.

I might as well do a solo game book or thing otherwise.

I wanna see what they do.

 

[pemerton]

Anyway, I see now the real problem with 4e is that it doesn't implement weight rules for cubes.

So in any other edition of D&D can PCs grappled dragons (or cubes, or elephants, or . . .)? Can a dragon crush a PC to death just by landing on them? Or is this interest in size and weight only relevant to this one case?

 

[darjr]

Anyway, I see now the real problem with 4e is that it doesn't implement weight rules for cubes.

So in any other edition of D&D can PCs grappled dragons (or cubes, or elephants, or . . .)? Can a dragon crush a PC to death just by landing on them? Or is this interest in size and weight only relevant to this one case?

Can a dragon crush a pc by landing on them? Yes? It's kinda wild you think that's a non sequitur.

 

[darjr]

Do you?

 

[cbwjm]

an astounding amount of posts on the cube.....wow. Do people think they are convincing anyone of anything, or is it just fun for you, genuinely curious. (and, ya, that's off topic too)

It's a forum thread, no one expects to convince anyone of anything! Makes it all the more surprising when you do.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Can a dragon crush a pc by landing on them? Yes? It's kinda wild you think that's a non sequitur.

Is it? It's the same setting where you can survive the falling damage at any height past a certain level.

 

[darjr]

Is it? It's the same setting where you can survive the falling damage at any height past a certain level.

yea past a certain level. But I think he left that out. Like it shouldn't be possible ever? maybe?