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

[James Gasik]

I'm of the view that if 4E had either dramatically overhauled the mechanics or dramatically overhauled the lore, it would have been fine. Dramatically overhauling both at once makes some sense, but I think it was too much for many fans.

Generally, while 4e addressed many issues well known by forum users at the time, what WotC failed to take into account was that most of their player base was not online, was not using the more recent/problematic bits of 3.5 design, and were not engaged with the errata and overhauls of the game's design, as much of that was presented in optional splatbooks.

So 4e was introduced a time where most of the people were in the dark as to why they needed a new edition, and other people were still exploring the depth of what 3.5 could do. I never even saw the Book of Nine Swords used in a game until after 4e was released! Heck, I didn't see anyone use Magic of Incarnum until 2017!

 

[darjr]

Folks. It was also kinda broke upon release. Monster math was off, we now know why, which led to slogs, and skill challenge math was broke.

Regardless if you love skill challenges or hate skill challenges, it wasn’t quite working from initial publication.

Posters on this very site, I think, lead a fix for both of those things.

Granted by MM3 those things were essentially fixed from WotC.

 

[darjr]

I have to say too.

I think that 4e, even as it was declining in sales for WotC and was becoming financially untenable, it was growing the hobby. Some where here on these boards we figured out the DDI subscription numbers and they were HUGE, for back then, and growing. It and the easy on ramp to starting to play with 4e, I think, did grow the hobby compared to where it was before 4e and/or at 4es launch. Not as much or as fast as 5e has, no, but maybe as much as anything else other than the Silver Age of AD&D and the statanic panic, B/X in sears, era.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There are gems in there like how they decided there were too many elves and no one needed more than like 3. So they chopped them down to Eldarin, High Elves, and Drow. Because as they put it, all the other types of elves were just "variations on high elves". And reading that was when my brain just kinda shut off for a minute and I came to with the taste of tin in my mouth.

Yeah, we need lots more elves with indistinct themes and elements!

There's other stuff like their excuse for not including gnomes as a PC race option was because they didn't see the point in them. But they explain how tried so hard to come up with a reason to but couldn't think up one.

I mean, the gnome’s place is obvious to everyone who’s ever played!

I do have to admit that it's one thing to affirm the strengths of a new edition, and another to malign an earlier edition to promote your new edition. It certainly seems to have left a bad taste in some folks' mouths.

I mean, it criticized a skill. The Profession skill. And perhaps the skill system as being too broad and leading to some redundancies.

Is anyone really insulted that 5e carried this idea forward?

WHERE IS THE PROFESSION SKILL?? I’M INSULTED!!!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've long figured it was released a year or two ahead of schedule, both in terms of 'what the market was ready for' and 'how much design work had gone into it.'

I think a lot of the designers were assuming a level of dissatisfaction with 3.5's rough points that either wasn't there, or that disappeared in the wake of resentment against 'the Man' when the new edition was announced. And if it's true that 'magic missiles not auto-hitting' and 'gnomes in the PHB' were two of the major sticking points, the D&D fanbase of the time was much more invested in little details of tradition than they would have expected, which means that the 'reimagine everything' approach 4E wound up taking was doomed to die from the beginning. The unfolding and success of 5E would seem to validate this point.

It's a good design for what it's designed to do (meaning I feel it accomplished its design goals well), but I don't like it any better now than I did then.

 

[Pedantic]

Generally, while 4e addressed many issues well known by forum users at the time, what WotC failed to take into account was that most of their player base was not online, was not using the more recent/problematic bits of 3.5 design, and were not engaged with the errata and overhauls of the game's design, as much of that was presented in optional splatbooks.

So 4e was introduced a time where most of the people were in the dark as to why they needed a new edition, and other people were still exploring the depth of what 3.5 could do. I never even saw the Book of Nine Swords used in a game until after 4e was released! Heck, I didn't see anyone use Magic of Incarnum until 2017!

I'm wistful for what young Pedantic thought 4e was going to be; a rerelease of the 3.5 core updated with all those useful late edition ideas. Make the Fighter into the Warblade, put the "Devoted X" and other "multiclassing fix" feats into the base multiclassing rules, or at least on the PHB, gather all those random skill usages from the Complete books, like using Heal to do forensics, and expand the skill sections to include them, etc, etc.

Really, I suppose I thought that was the prime time to do something like what 2024 5e is now attempting, treating the last decade as a playtest and releasing a refined/update version distilling that down to the best ideas. Basically a Rules Compendium, without a strict backwards compatibility requirement.

 

[Alzrius]

is it possible 4E was just too early?

I think it's important to remember that a lot of the issues people had with 4E weren't just about the mechanics or the lore. A lot of things caused problems that were related to the game without actually being a part of it per se. For instance:

• The restrictive GSL pushing nearly the entire third-party community away.
• Yanking PDFs (of older and current-edition) products off of DriveThruRPG (I'll admit I can't quite recall the timeline here, though).
• Issues with the DDI, from the VTT never manifesting the way it was promised (though that might be at least partially because of the tragedy that happened) to letting users sign up for one month, download everything, and then cancel their subscriptions.
• Paizo openly and deliberately offering an alternative to dissatisfied players by breathing new life into the discontinued edition (which is an offshoot of the GSL snafu on WotC's part).
• Ending the print magazines (it's iffy how much this actually mattered, though I suppose that depends on how you defined "actually," but even if they weren't financially worthwhile, the electronic alternatives struck a lot of their subscribers as being less than satisfactory replacements; this was another thing that opened the door for Paizo).
• A marketing campaign that often seemed awkward (re: the thing with the French guy) and sometimes bordered on hostile. An animation that shows your upset fans as literal trolls, who then get crapped on by a dragon, could charitably be seen as harmlessly poking fun at the controversies surrounding the rollout, but after the points listed above a lot of people weren't feeling very charitable.

That's practically a recipe for a perfect storm of controversy, all without even taking into account the things inherent to the game's rules and lore that were also points of friction. While there's no way to be sure, my guess is that if WotC hadn't made so many of those screw-ups, 4E would still be divisive for all the changes it made, but not nearly to the extent that it is today.

 

[darjr]

I think it's important to remember that a lot of the issues people had with 4E weren't just about the mechanics or the lore. A lot of things caused problems that were related to the game without actually being a part of it per se. For instance:

• The restrictive GSL pushing nearly the entire third-party community away.
• Yanking PDFs (of older and current-edition) products off of DriveThruRPG (I'll admit I can't quite recall the timeline here, though).
• Issues with the DDI, from the VTT never manifesting the way it was promised (though that might be at least partially because of the tragedy that happened) to letting users sign up for one month, download everything, and then cancel their subscriptions.
• Paizo openly and deliberately offering an alternative to dissatisfied players by breathing new life into the discontinued edition (which is an offshoot of the GSL snafu on WotC's part).
• Ending the print magazines (it's iffy how much this actually mattered, though I suppose that depends on how you defined "actually," but even if they weren't financially worthwhile, the electronic alternatives struck a lot of their subscribers as being less than satisfactory replacements; this was another thing that opened the door for Paizo).
• A marketing campaign that often seemed awkward (re: the thing with the French guy) and sometimes bordered on hostile. An animation that shows your upset fans as literal trolls, who then get crapped on by a dragon, could charitably be seen as harmlessly poking fun at the controversies surrounding the rollout, but after the points listed above a lot of people weren't feeling very charitable.

That's practically a recipe for a perfect storm of controversy, all without even taking into account the things inherent to the game's rules and lore that were also points of friction. While there's no way to be sure, my guess is that if WotC hadn't made so many of those screw-ups, 4E would still be divisive for all the changes it made, but not nearly to the extent that it is today.

The PDF's happened after release. The PHB was being widely distributed.

See What's the situation with D&D 4E's PDF availablity. | Dungeons & Dragons / Fantasy D20 Spotlight
Which I only post as a reference for about when it happend.

Dropping the Magazines and hurting 3rd party was a one two punch because both put a LOT of customers right into Paizo's hands directly. Happy Paizo customers.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Yeah, I remember WotC being very... well, WotC... back then too.

 

[billd91]

I mean, it criticized a skill. The Profession skill. And perhaps the skill system as being too broad and leading to some redundancies.

Is anyone deely insulted that 5e carried this idea forward?

WHERE IS THE PROFESSION SKILL?? I’M INSULTED!!!

The skill may still be gone (though partly covered by backgrounds), but it’s not like 5e is badwrongfunning people who used it in their marketing publications. Notable difference.