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

[MuhVerisimilitude]

It's my understanding that RuneQuest was big in Sweden. It's little surprise that so many other games that come from there often draw inspiration from BRP.

As far as I know it was not necessarily that RuneQuest itself was very big here, rather that it influenced the designers of Drakar & Demoner (now released as Dragonbane, in English) and as far as I know Drakar & Demoner was the biggest game here.

Basically, yes. Magic in D&D is allowed to violate concepts like physics, causality, and the laws of thermodynamics because that's what magic do.

If you're not explicitly supernatural in any way, doing things like "always hitting", "dealing damage on a miss", or "leaping 30' into the air" have no explanation, and there are people who need that explanation to be explicitly stated by the game- supposition or hypothesis has no place.

For these people, D&D starts with the same rules that our reality are bound by, and exceptions must be noted. D&D humans are the same as humans on Earth, unless otherwise stated.

It is obvious that we can declare that any action can be taken with no risk of failure and this makes complete sense because this is fiction. For example: A swordsman who cannot miss? Makes perfect sense to me. Plenty of these in fiction.

I can keep going: a bard who cannot fail a diplomatic encounter, a rogue who cannot possibly be detected. Why does this even need an explanation?

Comic books, for example, have Lucky Luke who, I think, cannot miss. We have Asterix and Obelix who both, I believe, have never missed an attack (they tend to one-shot anyone they fight).

 

[billd91]

This I can 100% gets behind! I personnally love the NADs and what they bring to the table, but I can understand that people can hate that new mechanic. And it’s true that 4e is the only edition that doesn’t use Saving Throw so if for you, it is an important part of DnD Legacy, I can understand that the move away from it could rub you the wrong way.

Honest question, believe me, it’s not a trap, I’m just curious. Would you be okay if the power was written like that:

Reaping Strike: You punctuate your scything attacks with wicked jabs and small cutting blows that slip through your enemy's defenses. The defender must make a dexterity Saving Throw. If he fail, he suffer 1(W)+Strength modifier damage. If he succeed, he takes half your Strength Modifier damage or equal to your Strength modifier if you are wielding a two-handed weapon.

Not particularly. It’s still breaking the paradigm of weapons vs armor - armor is designed to defend against weapons, no matter how tricky they are used. Plus, AC can incorporate other defensive factors that should be effective against little jabs as much as scything sweeps. Getting past that paradigm should be a very high bar, eking out 2-5 points of damage isn’t that kind of value. In addition, making an array of attempts is all part of the abstraction of combat attack rolls anyway.
Better to design it as an attack against AC that bestows advantage in some way. That serves to improve the chances of the attack dealing damage while remaining within the same paradigm.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sounds like we really need a, "What the heck happened to 5E" thread. So that we can explore how a poorly designed game with only intent to appeal to grognards became not just popular, but most popular D&D edition of all time. Leading theory so far is it was name dropped on a few TV shows.

The simple answer is, a lot of things other than design matter.

 

[Red Castle]

As far as I know it was not necessarily that RuneQuest itself was very big here, rather that it influenced the designers of Drakar & Demoner (now released as Dragonbane, in English) and as far as I know Drakar & Demoner was the biggest game here.


It is obvious that we can declare that any action can be taken with no risk of failure and this makes complete sense because this is fiction. For example: A swordsman who cannot miss? Makes perfect sense to me. Plenty of these in fiction.

I can keep going: a bard who cannot fail a diplomatic encounter, a rogue who cannot possibly be detected. Why does this even need an explanation?

Comic books, for example, have Lucky Luke who, I think, cannot miss. We have Asterix and Obelix who both, I believe, have never missed an attack (they tend to one-shot anyone they fight).

Robin Hood comes to mind… he would clearly deal Damage on a Miss!

 

[James Gasik]

Sounds like we really need a, "What the heck happened to 5E" thread. So that we can explore how a poorly designed game with only intent to appeal to grognards became not just popular, but most popular D&D edition of all time. Leading theory so far is it was name dropped on a few TV shows.

I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan of 5e. It's D&D, and I have always loved D&D, but it doesn't suit me as well as previous editions. I feel like there's not enough customization, too few decision points, most of the base classes are a ghost town for new abilities, subclasses progress too slowly, and there are huge chunks of high level content where you go up a level, see what you get and go "meh". Add to that the lack of transparency about why some of the stranger rules are the way they are, and a lot of ambiguous stuff that either comes down to "well, the DM decides", which makes me feel like it's less a game and more a DIY project that I have to pay money for, or worse, some developer sends out a tweet (or whatever they're called these days) with their opinion, which makes zero sense, and sometimes I wonder if these people even play their own game. Lol.

But! I fully realize that for some people, this is ideal for them. They don't want lots of decisions to make, or tons of stuff to keep track of. The more the game builds their character for them, the better. Many DM's like the freedom of coloring in the lines (or outside of them) rather than have a concrete RAW to tell them "you can make changes, but you really shouldn't". And a version of D&D that's easy for new people to get into and for DM's to hack is apparently what's needed right now.

Media exposure certainly helped, as it raised interest in the game. Not only with Stranger Things, but the fact that D&D is everywhere on social media, TikTok, Youtube, Twitter/X, Reddit, Facebook, etc. etc.. You can find advice, "Let's Plays", podcasts, animations, stories- it's everywhere you look.

Add to that a new movie, tons of merch, and not only a decent video game, but a turn based CRPG that lit the internet on fire and won Game of the Year (even if video game awards don't really mean much, it's nice to have recognition). The sheer amount of "trapped in a world that works on RPG logic" anime is all over the place doesn't hurt either- people going on adventures who have levels and classes and belong to fantasy races is pretty standard now, even more so than when World of Warcraft was at it's peak (which was also a pretty interesting time for the hobby).

There's a level of validation to being a D&D player that just didn't exist in the past to this level.

Now reading this, you might come away with the idea that it's not 5e that's popular, but D&D in general. That any version of the game that existed right now would do well. And the thing is, I don't think that's true. As much as I think of this "70% approval rate D&D" as basically being bland like oatmeal, lol, all the buzz and hype would be meaningless if the game was built for a narrow demographic, like, say, "AD&D fans" or "people who bounced off Pathfinder".

The pandemic did help as well, as strange as it is to see something positive come out of it- suddenly people needed games they can play in their home or online with other people. Note that WotC and Hasbro had nothing to do with this, but like Amazon, they certainly reaped the benefits- they didn't even have a VTT of their own!

The big question now isn't "how/why is D&D big", it's whether this is sustainable. Will people get bored of the game's direction? Will Hasbro mis-manage the company into the ground? Will another contender to the throne arise? Or is the current version of D&D able to endure in "evergreen" state for decades, like it's Monopoly or something? Everyone has an opinion, but only time will tell.

 

[James Gasik]

Never have I seen my opinions expressed so clearly. Thank you.

You're welcome. I may not always align with those views, but it's not impossible to understand. I have a friend who was one of my best DM's who is firmly entrenched in AD&D and will go on rants at great length about that "horrible WotC edition"...he's talking about 3e, lol.

You can try to counter his points with logic, but what it's really about is the fact that he was happy with the game he had. He didn't want change or need it, as his version of AD&D is so heavily house-ruled by now that sometimes I wonder if he even knows what the rules are (j/k). For him, it was about losing relevance, being told the game he loves, that's so perfect for him, is out of date. Irrelevant. That the arcane subsystems and clunky rules need to be discarded because they're bad design and if he doesn't want to dispense with them, why, he's playing the game wrong somehow!

And I think he resents the fact that I embraced these changes and don't see anything wrong with them. Which came full circle for me, in a way. I don't hate 5e the way he hates everything after the Player's Option books ("My PHB isn't black!"), but I get it now. People have embraced a version of D&D that I didn't want, and talk a lot of trash about other versions I liked. But that's ok.

One can hate the rules, but I still love the hobby, and as long as I can have fun with my friends throwing dice, everything else is secondary.

 

[James Gasik]

That’s pretty much the difference between a weapon attack and a magical attack though… weapon attack usually target AC while magic target either Fortitude, Reflex or Will.

But regardless, the fact remains that Damage on a Miss is acceptable in certain situations and not others, which is the only point I was making.

Though martials did have ways to target other defenses. There are even Feats to allow basic attacks to target them; a friend of mine had a Charge!Slayer who exclusively targets Reflex (even if sometimes the Reflex defense is higher than the AC of the target, lol).

 

[James Gasik]

Not particularly. It’s still breaking the paradigm of weapons vs armor - armor is designed to defend against weapons, no matter how tricky they are used. Plus, AC can incorporate other defensive factors that should be effective against little jabs as much as scything sweeps. Getting past that paradigm should be a very high bar, eking out 2-5 points of damage isn’t that kind of value. In addition, making an array of attempts is all part of the abstraction of combat attack rolls anyway.
Better to design it as an attack against AC that bestows advantage in some way. That serves to improve the chances of the attack dealing damage while remaining within the same paradigm.

Granted, there can be attacks that armor is ineffective against, but D&D usually models those as magical, and if something can bypass an armor type, it was usually a bonus to the attack roll.

Or worse, "touch AC", lol. Which I don't miss, even if it seems odd to me that delivering a touch attack actually cares about what armor someone is wearing at times.

 

[payn]

Granted, there can be attacks that armor is ineffective against, but D&D usually models those as magical, and if something can bypass an armor type, it was usually a bonus to the attack roll.

Or worse, "touch AC", lol. Which I don't miss, even if it seems odd to me that delivering a touch attack actually cares about what armor someone is wearing at times.

Touch AC was a patch so that casters with terrible BAB could actually fight with certain spells. On the plus side, it makes casters and martials operate and feel different, despite it being mechanically convoluted. As a big fan of 3E/PF1, I do not miss it at all.

 

[payn]

I wouldn't exactly call myself a fan of 5e. It's D&D, and I have always loved D&D, but it doesn't suit me as well as previous editions. I feel like there's not enough customization, too few decision points, most of the base classes are a ghost town for new abilities, subclasses progress too slowly, and there are huge chunks of high level content where you go up a level, see what you get and go "meh". Add to that the lack of transparency about why some of the stranger rules are the way they are, and a lot of ambiguous stuff that either comes down to "well, the DM decides", which makes me feel like it's less a game and more a DIY project that I have to pay money for, or worse, some developer sends out a tweet (or whatever they're called these days) with their opinion, which makes zero sense, and sometimes I wonder if these people even play their own game. Lol.

But! I fully realize that for some people, this is ideal for them. They don't want lots of decisions to make, or tons of stuff to keep track of. The more the game builds their character for them, the better. Many DM's like the freedom of coloring in the lines (or outside of them) rather than have a concrete RAW to tell them "you can make changes, but you really shouldn't". And a version of D&D that's easy for new people to get into and for DM's to hack is apparently what's needed right now.

Media exposure certainly helped, as it raised interest in the game. Not only with Stranger Things, but the fact that D&D is everywhere on social media, TikTok, Youtube, Twitter/X, Reddit, Facebook, etc. etc.. You can find advice, "Let's Plays", podcasts, animations, stories- it's everywhere you look.

Add to that a new movie, tons of merch, and not only a decent video game, but a turn based CRPG that lit the internet on fire and won Game of the Year (even if video game awards don't really mean much, it's nice to have recognition). The sheer amount of "trapped in a world that works on RPG logic" anime is all over the place doesn't hurt either- people going on adventures who have levels and classes and belong to fantasy races is pretty standard now, even more so than when World of Warcraft was at it's peak (which was also a pretty interesting time for the hobby).

There's a level of validation to being a D&D player that just didn't exist in the past to this level.

Now reading this, you might come away with the idea that it's not 5e that's popular, but D&D in general. That any version of the game that existed right now would do well. And the thing is, I don't think that's true. As much as I think of this "70% approval rate D&D" as basically being bland like oatmeal, lol, all the buzz and hype would be meaningless if the game was built for a narrow demographic, like, say, "AD&D fans" or "people who bounced off Pathfinder".

The pandemic did help as well, as strange as it is to see something positive come out of it- suddenly people needed games they can play in their home or online with other people. Note that WotC and Hasbro had nothing to do with this, but like Amazon, they certainly reaped the benefits- they didn't even have a VTT of their own!

The big question now isn't "how/why is D&D big", it's whether this is sustainable. Will people get bored of the game's direction? Will Hasbro mis-manage the company into the ground? Will another contender to the throne arise? Or is the current version of D&D able to endure in "evergreen" state for decades, like it's Monopoly or something? Everyone has an opinion, but only time will tell.

Plenty of opinions of the, "game must be more interesting for players, and offer better supported rulesets for GMs, or its going to fail". I think there are a few things in play here for 5E that make sense, but hard core players don't like. For better or worse, D&D has a monopoly like feel in play. There are certain ideas that must be met, or folks don't think it feels right. If Grogs really did sabotage the surveys, as is believed by some, they have set another generation up for the same feel expectation. It will be very hard to move away from these ideas and be successful. Secondly, I think the mass of gamers are just casual in nature. They don't need complicated player options, and/or extensive GM rulesets. The slower release schedule and more conservative additions and change seem to bear this out, much to chargin of 3E/4E fans.