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

[Pedantic]

I really enjoyed the Crusadar mechanic, getting those "flashes of divine insight" represented by random draws from my little deck of maneuver cards.

I think the issue with the mechanic was much less "random access to a few maneuvers" and much more the timing on how/when those maneuvers were presented to you. Early rumblings of encounter mechanics, but the Tome of Battle mixed in a fair few powers with non-combat utility that didn't quite fit the paradigm.

 

[Mannahnin]

I think the issue with the mechanic was much less "random access to a few maneuvers" and much more the timing on how/when those maneuvers were presented to you. Early rumblings of encounter mechanics, but the Tome of Battle mixed in a fair few powers with non-combat utility that didn't quite fit the paradigm.

I tried out and enjoyed all three new classes. I appreciated how 4E simplified the concepts; they were definitely a work in progress but it was pretty great getting martials which could hang with casters in 3.5 and didn't need to multiclass.

 

[Pedantic]

I tried out and enjoyed all three new classes. I appreciated how 4E simplified the concepts; they were definitely a work in progress but it was pretty great getting martials which could hang with casters in 3.5 and didn't need to multiclass.

Yeah, I had high hopes 4e was going to be less what it was and more "the Warblade is the Fighter, specialist wizards are all Beguilers and Dread Necromancers now, base multiclassing includes the effects of Devoted Tracker/Practiced Caster" etc when it was first floating around.

 

[pemerton]

You can always come up with an explanation if the games tells you to make one up.

So now imagining things - like the Tiefling madly setting the Hobgoblins alight, indifferent to the licking flames - is a bad thing in a FRPG?

 

[pemerton]

That's the basic issue at the end of the day.

Do you want a game to tell you what the explanations are, or do you not want the game to tell you what the explanations are?

And that dichotomy is at the heart of why you guys keep talking past each other. And why you will never actually come to any sort of compromise. One side looks at D&D and sees that all this stuff is defined by the system and can't imagine playing D&D without those system defined elements. The other side disagrees, thinks that very little is defined by the system and can't imagine trying to use the definitions in the system to define in game reality.

I look at it slightly differently.

I believe that I have played a wider variety of RPGs than @Micah Sweet. More simulationist RPGs - RuneQuest and Rolemaster, in my case; more Classic Traveller, which is the earliest RPG I know of to use AW-type "moves" (it is full of subystems of the sort when you do such-and-such, then make this roll that determines who says what about what happens next); more Burning Wheel, which in its PC build and inputs to action resolution is as compex and simulationist as RQ or RM, but in its actual resolution system is "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and "fail forward"; more Cortex+/MHRP and more Prince Valiant and more Agon 2e and . . .

If @Micah Sweet can only imagine playing 4e D&D in a way that produces absurd fiction, that's his prerogative. And I would advise him to find a different game. It is when I get told by others that my 4e fiction must be absurd, and that it is only by stepping over "cognitive gaps" that it becomes not absurd, that I disagree.

I also disagree when I get told that AD&D's rules must imply that a high level fighter can be run through with a sword a dozen times without dying or even really having to slow down very much, even though I regard that as absurd fiction, and the author of the game - Gygax - includes explanations of the mechanics in his rulebooks which expressly state something else.

I mean, I played Rolemaster up until the end of 2008 (a nineteen-year run of probably 3000 hours' play) and then picked up 4e D&D in Jan 2009. My head didn't explode, and nor did the heads of my players. People can tell that they are different games, which posit different relationships or ways of thinking about the connection between making a die roll and establishing the fiction. And of course they also found 4e very visceral - far more than AD&D - in the sense that it is a game where in combat with dragons you suffer ongoing burning damage, in combat with giants you get knocked about or knocked over, when someone clocks you over the head you might be stunned or dazed, when fighting a skill fighter with his polearm opponents find themselves wrongfooted and out-of-position and getting beaten down every time they try and do something, etc - all which seem highly verisimilitudinous in a way quite different from other versions of D&D.

So TL;DR: what I disagree with is dogmatic assertions about how things have to be in RPGing in general; and that 4e D&D has to be absurd or contradictory or laden with "cognitive gaps" in a way that AD&D is not.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I look at it slightly differently.

I believe that I have played a wider variety of RPGs than @Micah Sweet. More simulationist RPGs - RuneQuest and Rolemaster, in my case; more Classic Traveller, which is the earliest RPG I know of to use AW-type "moves" (it is full of subystems of the sort when you do such-and-such, then make this roll that determines who says what about what happens next); more Burning Wheel, which in its PC build and inputs to action resolution is as compex and simulationist as RQ or RM, but in its actual resolution system is "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and "fail forward"; more Cortex+/MHRP and more Prince Valiant and more Agon 2e and . . .

If @Micah Sweet can only imagine playing 4e D&D in a way that produces absurd fiction, that's his prerogative. And I would advise him to find a different game. It is when I get told by others that my 4e fiction must be absurd, and that it is only by stepping over "cognitive gaps" that it becomes not absurd, that I disagree.

I also disagree when I get told that AD&D's rules must imply that a high level fighter can be run through with a sword a dozen times without dying or even really having to slow down very much, even though I regard that as absurd fiction, and the author of the game - Gygax - includes explanations of the mechanics in his rulebooks which expressly state something else.

I mean, I played Rolemaster up until the end of 2008 (a nineteen-year run of probably 3000 hours' play) and then picked up 4e D&D in Jan 2009. My head didn't explode, and nor did the heads of my players. People can tell that they are different games, which posit different relationships or ways of thinking about the connection between making a die roll and establishing the fiction. And of course they also found 4e very visceral - far more than AD&D - in the sense that it is a game where in combat with dragons you suffer ongoing burning damage, in combat with giants you get knocked about or knocked over, when someone clocks you over the head you might be stunned or dazed, when fighting a skill fighter with his polearm opponents find themselves wrongfooted and out-of-position and getting beaten down every time they try and do something, etc - all which seem highly verisimilitudinous in a way quite different from other versions of D&D.

So TL;DR: what I disagree with is dogmatic assertions about how things have to be in RPGing in general; and that 4e D&D has to be absurd or contradictory or laden with "cognitive gaps" in a way that AD&D is not.

I don't play 4e anymore, in part because the designers told people to make up. An explanation if the rules don't make sense, because the rules came first. I want the rules to represent/model something specific; to me, that's what rules are for.

Also, unlike you I'm not going to make a "gaming street cred" claim about how many games I've played. I've played a couple dozen altogether, mostly traditional stuff but some more narrative fare like Apocalypse World. I feel I've played enough to be comfortable knowing what I like.

 

[pemerton]

I don't play 4e anymore, in part because the designers told people to make up. An explanation if the rules don't make sense, because the rules came first. I want the rules to represent/model something specific; to me, that's what rules are for.

Also, unlike you I'm not going to make a "gaming street cred" claim about how many games I've played. I've played a couple dozen altogether, mostly traditional stuff but some more narrative fare like Apocalypse World. I feel I've played enough to be comfortable knowing what I like.

I'm sure you know what you like.

It's when you tell me that the rules don't make sense that I disagree. I've read the rules of 4e D&D. They make sense - they are clearly expressed and contain no contradictions.

And the fiction they produce makes sense - if hp loss means the wearing down of resolve, it's no surprise that someone who can't be hurt by fire and hence doesn't care about being blasted by fire does not have their resolve worn down by someone trying to blast them with fire.

Apparently the previous paragraph never occurred to you until I pointed it out. OK, fair enough. That perhaps means that you never made sense of what is going on. That doesn't mean that what is going on makes no sense.

As I said, I get a bit tired of being told that my game makes no sense, is incoherent, is laden with "cognitive gaps", etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm sure you know what you like.

It's when you tell me that the rules don't make sense that I disagree. I've read the rules of 4e D&D. They make sense - they are clearly expressed and contain no contradictions.

And the fiction they produce makes sense - if hp loss means the wearing down of resolve, it's no surprise that someone who can't be hurt by fire and hence doesn't care about being blasted by fire does not have their resolve worn down by someone trying to blast them with fire.

Apparently the previous paragraph never occurred to you until I pointed it out. OK, fair enough. That perhaps means that you never made sense of what is going on. That doesn't mean that what is going on makes no sense.

As I said, I get a bit tired of being told that my game makes no sense, is incoherent, is laden with "cognitive gaps", etc.

The fiction produced sometimes make sense, and sometimes it only makes sense if you invent an explanation in the moment to explain it, like knocking an ooze prone. And that's fine, if you want that out of your rules. If you don't, it's unacceptable.

And speaking of damage types, what possible difference to someone's "resolve" (what does that even mean?) can there be to almost be hit by a sword versus almost being hit by a mace, or an arrow, or a blast of flame? And what if a creature is almost hit by an attack they're resistant to unawares, or they don't realize (either through ignorance or lack of sentience) that they're resistant?

The answer appears to be: more made up on the spot explanations.

 

[pemerton]

The fiction produced sometimes make sense, and sometimes it only makes sense if you invent an explanation in the moment to explain it, like knocking an ooze prone. And that's fine, if you want that out of your rules. If you don't, it's unacceptable.

And speaking of damage types, what possible difference to someone's "resolve" (what does that even mean?) can there be to almost be hit by a sword versus almost being hit by a mace, or an arrow, or a blast of flame? And what if a creature is almost hit by an attack they're resistant to unawares, or they don't realize (either through ignorance or lack of sentience) that they're resistant?

The answer appears to be: more made up on the spot explanations.

You've played a lot of AD&D, as best I can tell.

Why, when a 10th level fighter is stabbed from behind, unawares, by a spear, do they not die? Gygax's answer, I think, is because they don't actually get stabbed. With their "sixth sense" and "divine protection", they whirl around at the last minute - much as Conan would in a REH story - and narrowly avoid being stabbed. Perhaps they are grazed.

This is what happens in 4e D&D also.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You've played a lot of AD&D, as best I can tell.

Why, when a 10th level fighter is stabbed from behind, unawares, by a spear, do they not die? Gygax's answer, I think, is because they don't actually get stabbed. With their "sixth sense" and "divine protection", they whirl around at the last minute - much as Conan would in a REH story - and narrowly avoid being stabbed. Perhaps they are grazed.

This is what happens in 4e D&D also.

Sure. What does that have to do with anything? That's hardly what I was discussing in my last post.