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

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not interested in convincing other that they're wrong - I'm interested in refuting assertions that my game is incoherent, laden with cognitive gaps, etc.

I mean, I think I know what the "why" is - it's because AD&D looked at through the lens of 3E is taken to have established the paradigm of what a RPG is.

I agree more with the second than the first part of this: because it's not that the game defines this - as has been quoted in this thread, 4e D&D has clear rules and definitions.

It's because a certain tradition is taken to be what RPGing is as such.

Not really. Just what your rhetorical opponents want D&D to be. I personally am fine with non-D&D games having different assumptions, for example.

 

[pemerton]

Not any more. In 1e spellcasting was very easily interruptable, and an interrupted spell was lost.

But there is no chance of simply making an error in recitation.

D&D as written, maybe. That's why I kitbash things, to get that bit of realism in there where I can. I don't worry about the cobblestones if someone's walking normally but if you're trying to run across an uneven floor during a combat then yes, you'll roll a (very easy) Dex check to make it without stumbling.

That's just it: not everyone is willing to subscribe to some of those underlying game conventions without some pushback.

As they feel obliged to mention, at least in relation to 4e, often and vociferously!

 

[pemerton]

D&D is a much, much larger tent.

In its player numbers. I think the received wisdom exaggerates how large the tent is in terms of approaches to play.

 

[pemerton]

Not really. Just what your rhetorical opponents want D&D to be. I personally am fine with non-D&D games having different assumptions, for example.

The fact that you, or anyone else, wishes 4e had been different from what it is (which personally I already find odd - aren't there a billion versions and variants of D&D around that do more-or-less what you want?), doesn't have any bearing on whether the rules of 4e D&D are inconsistent, or unrealistic; or whether the fiction of my game, or any one else's game, is inconsistent.

I am unlikely ever to play RQ or RM again in my life. I have found other systems - especially Burning Wheel and Torchbearer - that deliver the same grittiness in PC build and the approach to framing action declarations, but that (in my view) are just superior in their overall game play (both action resolution, and broader elements of framing, setting etc on the GM side).

That doesn't make me inclined to suggest that RM, in any of its versions (including the new one that has just come out) is incoherent or whatever. It just means I don't play it.

 

[pemerton]

If you look around at any thread where someone says "hey I think Fighters should be more like mythical heroes", often citing Beowulf or Cu Chulainn, you'll see people rejecting the idea that martials could perform legendary feats. You can point out any of the already incredible feats they can perform (time dilation via Action Surge, regeneration via Second Wind, ability to get fight a dragon the size of a city bus effectively) until you're blue in the face, but the response you'll likely get is "unless the books say they are superhuman, they aren't".

The weird thing about this is that, if the relevant ability was put into the book, then the books would say that they're superhuman in that new respect also.

And getting back to this thread, I've lost count of how many times I've heard someone say 4e Fighters are basically spellcasters, usually zeroing in on one ability ("Come and Get It") and calling it mind control, instead of just taunting your opponent into doing something stupid.

Muhammad Ali, a master of martial mind control.

Heck, over the past couple of weeks I've got multiple people to agree to workload allocations that were not their first preference. Martial mind control!

 

[Manbearcat]

1) Where is this idea coming from that individual 4e players and individual 4e tables couldn't opt-out of weapon/martial-keyword attacks generating Damage on a Miss coming from? Its trivial to do so.

I'm looking at the log of the current 4e game I'm running. The first three combats of the Heroic Tier saw the following PC/PC assets like Companions/Summons etc (I'm going to keep it just to PC or the data will skew even further in the opt-out direction but this time for the GM) weapon/martial-keyword attacks that featured DaoM:

1/19

One...in nineteen. Ok, let me look at the second to last combat (the last one was an alternate Win Con "chase conflict embedded in a combat" so I'm not going to look at tha tone) for late Heroic Tier that features the primary weapon/martial-keyword using PC and assets:

0/14

Zero...in fourteen.

So in 4 combats, seeing 33 weapon or martial attacks performed, 1 singular attack features Damage on a Miss.

I guess the players of this game were just miraculously capable of an engineering feat that achieves the nigh-impossible escape velocity necessary to thwart 4e's overwhelming Damage on a Miss gravity!


2) And ok, 4e was just a big WotC psy-op to capture the Minis market? I've seen that working hypothesis (which is just another edition war epithet). Well then:

* Worlds and Monsters (the game's primer) would then be about the worst BUY MINIS primer ever. Its all about the game's fiction and sites of thematic conflict with nothing about mechanics or minis.

* If 4e was just a big WotC psy-op to sell minis, how does that comport with the other great edition war epithet that 4e was just a big ole WotC psy-op to convince the World of Warcraft player-base to move their virtual play from WoW to a 4e virtual tabletop? That doesn't seem particularly amenable to buying and deploying figurines for use on physical tables in meat-space!

And its not clear to me how the 4e primer Worlds and Monsters was supposed to appeal to these folks either (the large number of Diablo players on the console who were captured by the myth and thematic conflict of that game...sure!).

* In terms of meatspace 4e games, I've run 2 games fully levels 1-30, 1 game full Heroic Tier, 1 game full Paragon Tier, 1 game using the Neverwinter scheme of levels 1-10 runs through the entire Heroic/Paragon/Epic Tier experiences. In terms of PBP, I've run 5 games (with one current). Of those games, you have 18 players. Of all of those games and 18 players (including the PBPs...of which 4e is an absolute cinch to run for...which oddly doesn't support either Mini-enthusiast capture or VTT, WoW-player capture!), guess how many Minis have been deployed?

0, zip, zilch, nada!

Any position that 4e is just a superficial boardgame and a cynical ploy to capture the Minis/WoW market while being indifferent to excluding longterm D&D players (such as myself and the 18 players mentioned above) is just edition-warring nonsense.

 

[James Gasik]

But there is no chance of simply making an error in recitation.

Except for Fizban the Fabulous of course. Then again, that's just the avatar of a God clowning around, so maybe not a great example.

 

[Aldarc]

4E was designed to sell minis to a non existing hypothetical fan base to push those minis around a battlemat.

That's its biggest problem right there.

This seems doubtful considering that 4e was designed to be played with a VTT that never came to fruition due to unfortunate circumstances.

If a weapon attack can't sometimes result in the defender taking 0 damage because the attack was so poorly done, I'm not interested.

IMHO, DoaM gets overstated in 4e precisely because it's not as ubiquitous or prevalent as people make it out to be.

Only one out of four at-will Fighter abilities at level 1 in the PHB1 are DoaM: i.e., Reaping Strike, which is described as a flurry of fast attacks. There are a grand total of six powers in the base 4e PHB1 Fighter with "miss" properties, including the aforementioned one.

In addition, there are two additional powers among the four Fighter Paragon paths with the "miss" property. So the vast majority of your Fighter attacks made with a weapon that miss will result in the defender taking 0 damage.

With the exception of the level 1 at-will power, these Fighter miss powers are all attached to once-per-day Daily powers. (Remember the logic we heard time and time again of how it feels bad for spellcasters to expend a limited once-per.day spell slot and not get some effect? Same logic applies here too.)

Moreover, keep in mind that not every "on a miss" descriptor you find in the PHB results in damage! A miss with the Fighter's Villain's Menace power, for example, results in the defender taking 0 damage; however, the Fighter then gains a +1 to attacks and +2 to damage against the opponent until the end of the encounter.

 

[Red Castle]

This seems doubtful considering that 4e was designed to be played with a VTT that never came to fruition due to unfortunate circumstances.

While I don't think that 4e was designed specifically to sell miniatures, it's pretty clear that they still had that in mind to try and monetize the brand. While they list miniatures and battlegrid as only useful in the player handbook, they do list them as necessary in the Dungeonmaster Guide, also proposing their Dungeon tiles and Dungeon Miniatures line of products of course.

But they did eventually offer an alternative, at least when they launched the Essentials line, with Monster Tokens coming with the Monster Vault. So I don't think they were malicious about it, I think they just wanted to make combats as tactical as possible, and the best way to do it is with miniatures and a grid, or on a VTT. And well, they're a buisness, so of course they'll try to sell their product and find new ways to use them.

The problem I think is not that they tried to monetize the brand by 'forcing' players to buy miniatures, it's that they expected that every DnD players wanted more tactical combats and they made their rules accordingly. They didn't take into account that a lot of players prefer to play Theater of the Mind, and well, while I know that it's possible to play 4e without any miniatures (I do it sometimes when I don't want to bother making a map), it is much better played on a tactical grid... If someone wants to play DnD without miniatures, even if 4e is my favorite edition, I would suggest playing another one.

Let's not forget that, compared to pretty much every other hobby, TTRPG is pretty cheap... you usually just need one or two books, a couple of dice, pen and papers and you're all set. And more often than not, it will be just one of the players buying the books, not even considering the fact that books are pretty easy to pirate on the internet. Compare that to CCG like Magic or miniature game like Warhammer and as a business, it is much harder to monetize the TTRPG. Since WotC were selling the DnD Miniatures game back then, I think it is only natural that, as a buisness, they tried to give one more reason to buy those miniatures.

 

[soviet]

While I don't think that 4e was designed specifically to sell miniatures, it's pretty clear that they still had that in mind to try and monetize the brand. While they list miniatures and battlegrid as only useful in the player handbook, they do list them as necessary in the Dungeonmaster Guide, also proposing their Dungeon tiles and Dungeon Miniatures line of products of course.

But they did eventually offer an alternative, at least when they launched the Essentials line, with Monster Tokens coming with the Monster Vault. So I don't think they were malicious about it, I think they just wanted to make combats as tactical as possible, and the best way to do it is with miniatures and a grid, or on a VTT. And well, they're a buisness, so of course they'll try to sell their product and find new ways to use them.

The problem I think is not that they tried to monetize the brand by 'forcing' players to buy miniatures, it's that they expected that every DnD players wanted more tactical combats and they made their rules accordingly. They didn't take into account that a lot of players prefer to play Theater of the Mind, and well, while I know that it's possible to play 4e without any miniatures (I do it sometimes when I don't want to bother making a map), it is much better played on a tactical grid... If someone wants to play DnD without miniatures, even if 4e is my favorite edition, I would suggest playing another one.

Let's not forget that, compared to pretty much every other hobby, TTRPG is pretty cheap... you usually just need one or two books, a couple of dice, pen and papers and you're all set. And more often than not, it will be just one of the players buying the books, not even considering the fact that books are pretty easy to pirate on the internet. Compare that to CCG like Magic or miniature game like Warhammer and as a business, it is much harder to monetize the TTRPG. Since WotC were selling the DnD Miniatures game back then, I think it is only natural that, as a buisness, they tried to give one more reason to buy those miniatures.

All of this applies to 3e as well.