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

[Kannik]

It's more than that, it also shares all the same mecanical basis. Characters have exactly the same attributes, use a d20 to roll for attack or skills but various different dice for weapons and damage, they all have HP and Armor class, when building a character you'll choose a race and class and then gain different abilities while gaining levels, etc... There is some nuance, like there is with every edition (and that's why different people will prefer different editions), but the basis is the same. I started a 4e campaign a couple months ago with players that never tried it but already played different edition (one coming from 5e, the other from 2e) and they all felt right at home, I didn't have to spend a lot of time teaching them how to play, they already knew most of the rules.

Especially given that some of the ‘examples’ that got thrown against 4e (including in this very thread, repeating the same handful of items/examples from the game’s introduction 15(!) years ago) are edge cases that, by their nature of being an edge case, infrequently come up in play. Plus, as noted, there have always been funky edge cases, but they had simply become so familiar that they didn’t register anymore.

I am starting to wonder/recognize that due to its nature as a very social game, 4e had extra hurdles to clear. From my own experience, both back during the introduction but also in speaking to growing numbers of gamers today, that groups that had one or two vehemently opposed members (whether they played the game or not, or if the game had even been released yet) could lead a whole group to avoid 4e to avoid disharmony and to maintain social cohesion.

That's not how it went when I played Star Wars Edge of the Empire with players that used to play the WEG version. Now that is two games that share the same name and IP but have two totally different game mecanics.

Oooooh wow do they ever.

 

[Lanefan]

Before 4e launched was there a "first look" book? I think it's been mentioned (or I made it up in my head). If there was such a book or document does anyone have any pictures from it or a legal way to look at it?

There were two small pre-release intro books: Worlds and Monsters was one and I forget the title of the other.

Worlds and Monsters has some rockin' artwork in it; and I was rather let down when 4e itself came out and didn't maintain that standard.

 

[Kannik]

Rituals were also almost completely ignored in adventures. (and in the system in general). Imagine if

For the paladin in one of my groups, I allowed them a subset of rituals (no feat required) that could be performed spending Healing Surges (they could also spend the residuum if they wanted to). They loved it.

Being so wishy washy on explaining some of the effect first mechanics and how that works, etc. Just lay it out -- HP are not meat points, prone is a condition that represents hampering an enemy and usually that can be represented as knocked to the ground but could also...

Aye! They could've added something akin to the 1e AD&D description of HP and been more explicit about the broad nature of many things and how they were being used to avoid overcomplicating things with minutia/granularity that didn't add to the gameplay experience.

I find the "creativity/imagination" comment from above very funny, because I found 4e played much much better with players that were creative and imaginative. The kind of players that could make skill challenges work well by reacting to the fiction in a push/pull way, could help wrap a narrative around the occasional mechanics where the default narrative didn't fit perfectly, didn't have a problem using improvised actions which I could easily make worth it using p.42, never thought warlords were shouting wounds closed because they were imaginative enough to think of HPs as partly a narrative device, etc.

Likewise. I/we found 4e much more freeing than 3e when it came to creativity, more akin to my 1e/2e experience.* And p42** explicitly called out that improvisation and creativity was expected and encouraged.


* That said, the less dangerous nature of the default assumptions for encounters reduced the need for some of the more "old school" tricks and strategizing. But when playing a campaign (as noted in session 0) with stronger than average foes, that creativity not only returned, but could get ramped up to delicious levels combining character abilities with the classic bevvy of tricks.

** After all these years, the one thing I don't know about 4e that I really want to know is whether that having those rules on that page number page was intentional or a fortuitous bit of luck...

 

[Zeromaru X]

There were two small pre-release intro books: Worlds and Monsters was one and I forget the title of the other.

Races and Classes. That has the background lore of all the playable races from PHB one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I don't think Mike should be singled out here. I never got the impression that WotC fully understood exactly what they created and how it should best be used.

Adventure design is one the ways this shows. Although later adventures were slightly better than KotS, none of WotC ones really took a Zeitgeist like design of one big map story important combat in between lots of other stuff (exploration, free roleplay, investigation, etc.) which was probably 4e's sweet spot. Or spread out the right amount of XP into multiple rooms that were expected to converge so it turned into one big regular encounter.

Rituals were also almost completely ignored in adventures. (and in the system in general). Imagine if

1) rituals were split into Arcane, Divine, Primal and you only got access to one list with your class (or the feat)
2) traditional full spellcasters like Wizard, Cleric, etc. got a few free Ritual casts a day and that was put into the class description in a Spells Per Day type chart. Say eventually One per day at Level -1, 2 per day at Level -2, and 3 per day at Level -3 or whatever. And got 1 free ritual added to their ritual book per level.
3) adventures assumed you might have access to some of these and enemies use them too

Rituals were such an amazing answer to "how can we have this kind of powerful utility magic that D&D is known for and not have it be tied to certain classes or too often circumvent combat encounters?". Then they completely ignored it, taking away a big part of the "feel" of prior D&D.

Being so wishy washy on explaining some of the effect first mechanics and how that works, etc. Just lay it out -- HP are not meat points, prone is a condition that represents hampering an enemy and usually that can be represented as knocked to the ground but could also...

I find the "creativity/imagination" comment from above very funny, because I found 4e played much much better with players that were creative and imaginative. The kind of players that could make skill challenges work well by reacting to the fiction in a push/pull way, could help wrap a narrative around the occasional mechanics where the default narrative didn't fit perfectly, didn't have a problem using improvised actions which I could easily make worth it using p.42, never thought warlords were shouting wounds closed because they were imaginative enough to think of HPs as partly a narrative device, etc.

4e worked better for people who were on board with it. But many people weren't, and their efforts to get people on board with it were rather poor.

 

[James Gasik]

4e worked better for people who were on board with it. But many people weren't, and their efforts to get people on board with it were rather poor.

Yes, this is definitely an unfortunate part of the process. For whatever reason, WotC seemed to have this idea that everyone would naturally want to switch to 4e, when a cursory look at their own forums (back when they had such things) would show there was a great deal of polarized opinions about things like At-Will Warlocks and The Book of Nine Swords, which were the obvious test bed for 4e.

It was like they conned themselves into thinking "hey, everyone bought 3.5, we can put the D&D label on anything and it will sell!".

By the time I myself was ready to give 4e a shot, they were already Essentializing the game in a misguided effort to win back players, at the expense of the players they already had.

 

[darjr]

Yes, this is definitely an unfortunate part of the process. For whatever reason, WotC seemed to have this idea that everyone would naturally want to switch to 4e, when a cursory look at their own forums (back when they had such things) would show there was a great deal of polarized opinions about things like At-Will Warlocks and The Book of Nine Swords, which were the obvious test bed for 4e.

It was like they conned themselves into thinking "hey, everyone bought 3.5, we can put the D&D label on anything and it will sell!".

By the time I myself was ready to give 4e a shot, they were already Essentializing the game in a misguided effort to win back players, at the expense of the players they already had.

actually no.

According to Ben and the people he talked with and the info he found, they knew it was going to be controversial. They also believed it was worth it because they were confident, or at least hopeful, that it would bring in many more new people.

 

[billd91]

Yes, this is definitely an unfortunate part of the process. For whatever reason, WotC seemed to have this idea that everyone would naturally want to switch to 4e, when a cursory look at their own forums (back when they had such things) would show there was a great deal of polarized opinions about things like At-Will Warlocks and The Book of Nine Swords, which were the obvious test bed for 4e.

It was like they conned themselves into thinking "hey, everyone bought 3.5, we can put the D&D label on anything and it will sell!".

By the time I myself was ready to give 4e a shot, they were already Essentializing the game in a misguided effort to win back players, at the expense of the players they already had.

Hasbro/WotC management might have thought putting the D&D label on anything would sell, but I wouldn’t assume the same for the designers/developers who nevertheless have to maintain a united front in public.

 

[pemerton]

4e worked better for people who were on board with it.

This seems a truism.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This seems a truism.

Read the rest of the sentence.