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

[soviet]

Whether it was verisimilitude or having an SRD that didn't punish third parties who used it, 5E was better – or at least not as bad – as 4E.

Yes my fighter can fall off a high cliff and always survive, yes he can never be killed by a single sword blow, yes a normal archer could fire an entire quiver of arrows at him and he would always survive, yes he would wake up the next morning back to 100% health, yes once per fight exactly (no more no less) he can act twice as quickly, yes three times a day exactly (no more no less) he can be lucky or make someone else unlucky, yes he can only get better at diplomacy by killing a hundred enemies...

...but when he misses someone he misses someone goddamit because otherwise it would be unrealistic.

 

[Alzrius]

Yes my fighter can fall off a high cliff and always survive, yes he can never be killed by a single sword blow, yes a normal archer could fire an entire quiver of arrows at him and he would always survive, yes he would wake up the next morning back to 100% health, yes once per fight exactly (no more no less) he can act twice as quickly, yes three times a day exactly (no more no less) he can be lucky or make someone else unlucky, yes he can only get better at diplomacy by killing a hundred enemies...

...but when he misses someone he misses someone goddamit because otherwise it would be unrealistic.

The idea of "if there's even one fantastical/unrealistic/supernatural aspect to the setting, then all questions of verisimilitude/believability/internal consistency deserve no serious consideration whatsoever" is a perpetual bugaboo when it comes to discussing a fantasy world, mostly because it's a deflection that has no actual substance to it. Just because you have godzilla-sized lizards that can fly, cast spells, and are smarter than most humans doesn't mean that other issues of developing an immersive setting cease to be issues. To suggest otherwise is fairly dismissive of other people's concerns, which is another way of throwing badwrongfun charges at them.

 

[Alzrius]

(I realise this is an exaggeration of many people's actual positions.)

Such an exaggeration that I'm having trouble mapping it to anything said in this thread.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

again, does 5E have damage on a miss? No?

gestures at OneDnD Graze weapon mastery

 

[Alzrius]

gestures at OneDnD Graze weapon mastery

<points out that a playtest (which isn't yet finalized) for a revised edition/OneD&D/a .5 edition (even if they don't call it that) isn't 5E>

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

<points out that a playtest for a revised edition/.5 edition (even if they don't call it that) isn't 5E>

And in a year it will be, so?

Just because you have godzilla-sized lizards that can fly, cast spells, and are smarter than most humans doesn't mean that other issues of developing an immersive setting cease to be issues. To suggest otherwise is fairly dismissive of other people's concerns, which is another way of throwing badwrongfun charges at them.

True, but these 'immersion' calls are commonly made only in an effort to put down the non-casters. Of course your halfling cannot jump up 3 meters just because the rules say they can, that's nonsense, why isn't he casting Jump or Fly to do it instead?

 

[Alzrius]

And in a year it will be, so?

And in a year we'll know if what's in the playtest matches what's in the finished rules. But for right now, we don't, so it's not really helpful to note what a may or not happen (especially since "5E" is, as I understand it, a shorthand for the 2014 edition; what happens in the 2024 alteration is something that deserves to be considered separately).

True, but these 'immersion' calls are commonly made only in an effort to put down the non-casters. Of course your halfling cannot jump up 3 meters just because the rules say they can, that's nonsense, why isn't he casting Jump or Fly to do it instead?

I feel like this is a separate topic, insofar as considerations of what expressly supernatural things can be done versus mundane accomplishments. Immersion, insofar as it's abetted by internal consistency, is a matter of verisimilitude. If you can say how the non-casters are doing fantastic things, and why they work the way they do, that's virtually always sufficient (it's not like it has to be all that deep, either; "focusing your ki," for instance, can be enough). The problem is that D&D has grown more and more reluctant to talk about the in-character nature of what the rules represent, for reasons I've never been clear about.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

And in a year we'll know if what's in the playtest matches what's in the finished rules. But for right now, we don't, so it's not really helpful to note what a may or not happen (especially since "5E" is, as I understand it, a shorthand for the 2014 edition; what happens in the 2024 alteration is something that deserves to be considered separately).

I feel like this is a separate topic, insofar as considerations of what expressly supernatural things can be done versus mundane accomplishments. Immersion, insofar as it's abetted by internal consistency, is a matter of verisimilitude. If you can say how the non-casters are doing fantastic things, and why they work the way they do, that's virtually always sufficient (it's not like it has to be all that deep, either; "focusing your ki," for instance, can be enough). The problem is that D&D has grown more and more reluctant to talk about the in-character nature of what the rules represent, for reasons I've never been clear about.

D&D has been reluctant to talk about the fictional meaning of mechanics because there is no consensus and it has been ambiguous from the get go. @Snarf Zagyg has a recent post somewhere about the different views on hit points between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson at the very beginning. Someone else in this or another thread (I think it was @Maxperson ) held the view that the shield spell unwound time in the narrative. To me, that is not the way I envision it working. Mainly I do not think the fiction is completely resolved until the combat round is compete.
This means that when the topic is brought up there is endless back and forth about what a specific mechanic means and those conversations are unproductive as each side dig in to defend their interpretation.
The end result is that Finn McCool or Cuchulainn or Sun Wu Kong or Goku cannot be D&D fighters. On the other hand it does allow people with slightly differing view as to what the corner cases are to sit around a table and play the same game as long as no one points out the said sticking points. Which, I think has contributed to D&D's success.
In other words the ambiguities in D&D mechanics has allowed the game to work, even if the designers have no clue about sword fighting, how much armour weighs or rock climbing.

 

[Alzrius]

In other words the ambiguities in D&D mechanics has allowed the game to work, even if the designers have no clue about sword fighting, how much armour weighs or rock climbing.

I can understand this point of view, and even agree with it to a certain extent, but I don't think it's all that much of what "allows the game to work," insofar as that idea suggests that the game wouldn't work if it had better in-character presentations for how it functions.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I can understand this point of view, and even agree with it to a certain extent, but I don't think it's all that much of what "allows the game to work," insofar as that idea suggests that the game wouldn't work if it had better in-character presentations for how it functions.

A game might work better for some people. One could argue, that 4e is very good at generating its fiction if you share its assumptions about how to do that but some people balked very hard at it.
My main point, though was, that the ambiguity was baked in from the very beginning and this has been exacerbated by a succession of designers (all with their own take) adding in their own bits.
It is not that you cannot create such a game, it is that a significant proportion of the audience would reject it as D&D. There are a lot of games made over the last fifty years that were reactions to these very elements in D&D.