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

[Zaukrie]

For me, I don't care about defending a game system, or my feelings about it. I've never understood that need......but it is very exhausting coming into some of these threads to talk about a game, only to have certain people come in and attack and argue over and over, to no real end as far as I can see....

 

[Lanefan]

As I recall Gary Gygax's preference for casual pick up games was to have the players use 3rd level PCs.

Sure, a game can start at any level and if it's a one-off or con game it often kinda has to in order to be playable.

He talks about this in the 1E DMG, too, that experienced players can certainly be permitted to start above 1st level, particularly if they're joining an existing campaign, but that he advises it's best for newbies to start from zero because the experience will be invaluable.

I agree and disagree with him at the same time. I agree that a new player starting from zero gives great experience, but I disagree about having that happen within an established and-or higher-level party as the experience won't be nearly as good: either the existing characters will cover for the new one until it catches up, or the new one will drop dead from encounters which the others can easily survive.

Note too that in this passage he's talking about individual players joining, not about how the campaign itself should start.

Zero to hero is a preference. AD&D characters start out tougher than OD&D characters, as a rule. Generally speaking, every edition has had characters start out a bit stronger (2E is kind of an exception, but by 1989 I think tables NOT using the Death's Door dead at -10 rule were pretty rare, so maybe not entirely an exception).

I think 5e has dialled it back some from 4e - the gap's not as big.

And, one can make the gap smaller from the other direction by, say, applying death at -10 to everyone in the setting rather than just adventurers.

 

[Lanefan]

Gary's description of hit points covers a lot of stuff, but most of it boils down to "ability to defend oneself and not suffer a fatal/incapacitating blow". In my experience, weariness interferes with one's ability to dodge and parry- to defend oneself. So inevitably as a fight wears on and one gets tired, one's defense gets worse.

And at the same time and for the same reason - fatigue - one's ability to deal out damage also becomes worse. The end result would be pretty much a wash, hm?

 

[Zaukrie]

And at the same time and for the same reason - fatigue - one's ability to deal out damage also becomes worse. The end result would be pretty much a wash, hm?

The fiction i use, if ever asked, is that the PCs find more vulnerabilities the longer they are in a fight against a creature(s). But mostly my players don't get hung up on the fiction of the rules.

 

[Mannahnin]

I agree and disagree with him at the same time. I agree that a new player starting from zero gives great experience, but I disagree about having that happen within an established and-or higher-level party as the experience won't be nearly as good: either the existing characters will cover for the new one until it catches up, or the new one will drop dead from encounters which the others can easily survive.

You've misremembered and it seems like you've misread me too?

Gary suggests that new players start off at 1st, and he specifically suggests that if you've got an ongoing campaign that they should adventure separately from higher level PCs.

Personally, I don't mind letting them join a higher level party, at least if I'm not running an open table where I have time to run separate low level sessions. If I DO have time to run low level sessions on top of the higher level ones, definitely, great to just do that. But if I have to run them together that's still ok, especially because they'll catch up really fast using by the book 1E experience rules.

I think 5e has dialled it back some from 4e - the gap's not as big.

That's largely true, though 5E characters still got more forgiving rules for death and dying than 4E had, and of course 5E is designed to rush you through the first two levels in a couple of sessions, so you're rapidly to 3rd, which is a similar (or even greater, relative to enemies) power level as a 1st level 4E character.

And at the same time and for the same reason - fatigue - one's ability to deal out damage also becomes worse. The end result would be pretty much a wash, hm?

Generally I'd say not really, no. It takes very little force to pierce a human being or fracture their skull with a weapon. If you've still got enough energy to swing the thing at all you've still got the capability to kill someone with it. You COULD say it's a wash, but I don't think it really is, so I think there's at least a reasonable argument to be made that Into the Odd or Worlds Without Number's systems, with their automatic damage, are at least as simulationist as D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

At a minimum, if you are aware that there might be issues with the reception of the product, you work hard on the rollout to make sure you educate people and minimize those issues.

I don't know that better PR and marketing could have saved 4e, but I do know that the rollout, from everything I understand, was practically criminal given what they knew.

Better marketing and rollout certainly could have tamped down the divisiveness aspect; I think at least to the point of allowing 4e to stand or fall on its own merits. After that, all bets are off as to how 4e would have fared.

But instead it's almost like the marketers, on realizing it might be divisive, decided to lean into and promote that division in their approach. I saw this firsthand, though at the time I didn't yet realize just what I was seeing.

Why this approach? Maybe to intentionally start a war and thus get people talking about it, maybe to make 4e sound like the New Shiny and play on people's (real or perceived) elitism, or...who knows?

Hindsight says: big mistake in any event.

 

[Zaukrie]

Better marketing and rollout certainly could have tamped down the divisiveness aspect; I think at least to the point of allowing 4e to stand or fall on its own merits. After that, all bets are off as to how 4e would have fared.

But instead it's almost like the marketers, on realizing it might be divisive, decided to lean into and promote that division in their approach. I saw this firsthand, though at the time I didn't yet realize just what I was seeing.

Why this approach? Maybe to intentionally start a war and thus get people talking about it, maybe to make 4e sound like the New Shiny and play on people's (real or perceived) elitism, or...who knows?

Hindsight says: big mistake in any event.

blowing up the FR was also a big mistake, IMO.

 

[Lanefan]

There were, in fact, a lot of people who played 4e a little, or haltingly, 14-15 years ago, and bounced off of it.

Worth noting that the odds are high those people mostly tried 4e when it first came out, having access to - and thus using - only the first round of books. Which means any reference to DMG II and other later releases is lost on them, no matter how much better those releases may have made the game, because by then they'd packed in and gone to something else.

 

[Mannahnin]

But instead it's almost like the marketers, on realizing it might be divisive, decided to lean into and promote that division in their approach. I saw this firsthand, though at the time I didn't yet realize just what I was seeing.

Why this approach? Maybe to intentionally start a war and thus get people talking about it, maybe to make 4e sound like the New Shiny and play on people's (real or perceived) elitism, or...who knows?

My perception was that they were indeed trying to New Shiny it. Now, there are some radical changes in there which I think could have been selling points without dumping on 3.x and earlier editions. Like actually having balanced casters and non-casters. And proportional healing.

But I don't think they really understood what they were selling.

blowing up the FR was also a big mistake, IMO.

I can totally get the idea of resetting because they thought FR had too much canon and metaplot and had become overwhelming and impossible for newbies to get into, but yeah, the way they did it I don't think really worked.

 

[darjr]

blowing up the FR was also a big mistake, IMO.

I dint remember who said it but someone said something like,

“You just threw away your hottest IP”