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

[tomBitonti]

I dont think new, younger players will even be using books.

And I can’t disagree with that. (As he looks worriedly towards the fire station …)
‘TomB

 

[pemerton]

Who's insisting that?

@Micah Sweet

 

[pemerton]

Actually moving outside of the square is fairly defined mechanically with considerations of attacks of opportunity, movement limits, potential difficult terrain effects, defender powers, etc.

You could do a narrative of an attack that is disassociated from the mechanics that are occurring and narratively moves beyond the movement limits in the six second round and does not draw a triggered ready action attack or provoke from a defender pinning you down with a mark and then returning to the pinned down spot, but that would tend to detract from the visceral connection of mechanics and narrative.

In my view it in no way detracts from the sense of what is happening to imagine the fighter, performing CaGI, to be interacting in some fashion with the affected enemies which might involve moving bits of their body outside the square that (for mechanical purposes) they are occupying.

 

[Hussar]

At the end of the day, I think for a lot of people who liked 4e, we would like some sort of closure as to why we were chucked so thoroughly under the bus. In this thread, I've been repeatedly told that I MUST respect people's playstyles and preferences and opinions. I must not question them.

Yet, my playstyles and preferences got completely ignored in the run up to 5e. No one had any problems chucking me under the bus and then putting things in drive and reverse repeatedly to make sure that I knew exactly where my place was in the hobby.

So, yeah, I'm a bit thin skinned here. When I ask for clarification, I get told I'm being disrespectful. When I claim that I don't understand how people are arriving at particular viewpoints, I'm accused of being too contradictory. When I see things that to me look entirely contradictory, I'm told that there is no contradiction at all. When I point to points where people are actually factually wrong, I get told to shut up.

The basic reason that I think that 4e failed is that it did not pay enough attention to the legacy elements of the game. Take the whole "magic missile" thing that one of Paizo devs saw as a huge deal. To me, that's a complete shrug. Ok, Magic Missile now needs an attack roll. No problem. But, again, that's because the position I'm coming from does not see any value in legacy. I simply don't. Just because something was done a certain way in another edition, well, I couldn't care less. If it's a good idea? Bring it forward. Otherwise, chuck it out and try something else. I have zero feelings about it.

And, this largely explains why I cannot connect to people who strongly reacted negatively to 4e. We are just fundamentally not speaking the same language.

 

[pemerton]

At the end of the day, I think for a lot of people who liked 4e, we would like some sort of closure as to why we were chucked so thoroughly under the bus.

Isn't the answer to this commercial imperatives?

In this thread, I've been repeatedly told that I MUST respect people's playstyles and preferences and opinions. I must not question them.

You especially must not question them when they tell you that you're a bad player playing a bad game!

 

[Manbearcat]

See, this is a thread about how things went wrong with 4e. So those of us participating in this thread about where and how 4e lost us are part of how things went wrong (and appeared to have some predictability if Ben Riggs's information on the design process of 4e is correct). So it's not like any of us are barging into a thread unwelcome. And yet, whenever we do relate our experiences and objections to elements of the game, we constantly get told that we didn't understand the game or its design which is SUCH a constructive and welcoming response. Some of us played it for months - and still our experiences and impressions are rejected by you and have been for 15 years. So yeah, you TOTALLY bear no responsibility for the conflict going on and on.

Just "relating our experiences" and "not getting constructive responses" huh?

That is what is happening here?

* Someone ish-posts an Indiana Jones meme and tries to compare an anecdote of a non-TTRPG, movie protagonist (where the action is all scripted...some of it for comedic effect even!) to show just how lame and ridiculous Come and Get It is...interestingly, they didn't use the anecdote from the exact_same_movie of the same character getting compelled (after shaking his head knowing this is a bad idea) into a fist fight after a huge, dangerous, shirtless badass challenges him to..."Come Here!"

* In response, that person gets multiple within the ruleset answers as to how to resolve his issue and one simple, social contract answer as to how to resolve his question.


Who is "relating their experiences" here? Who is being "constructive?"

This exchange and distortion is a microcosm of the entire history of this conversation on these forums here and everywhere else (including meatspace).

 

[payn]

At the end of the day, I think for a lot of people who liked 4e, we would like some sort of closure as to why we were chucked so thoroughly under the bus. In this thread, I've been repeatedly told that I MUST respect people's playstyles and preferences and opinions. I must not question them.

Yet, my playstyles and preferences got completely ignored in the run up to 5e. No one had any problems chucking me under the bus and then putting things in drive and reverse repeatedly to make sure that I knew exactly where my place was in the hobby.

So, yeah, I'm a bit thin skinned here. When I ask for clarification, I get told I'm being disrespectful. When I claim that I don't understand how people are arriving at particular viewpoints, I'm accused of being too contradictory. When I see things that to me look entirely contradictory, I'm told that there is no contradiction at all. When I point to points where people are actually factually wrong, I get told to shut up.

The basic reason that I think that 4e failed is that it did not pay enough attention to the legacy elements of the game. Take the whole "magic missile" thing that one of Paizo devs saw as a huge deal. To me, that's a complete shrug. Ok, Magic Missile now needs an attack roll. No problem. But, again, that's because the position I'm coming from does not see any value in legacy. I simply don't. Just because something was done a certain way in another edition, well, I couldn't care less. If it's a good idea? Bring it forward. Otherwise, chuck it out and try something else. I have zero feelings about it.

And, this largely explains why I cannot connect to people who strongly reacted negatively to 4e. We are just fundamentally not speaking the same language.

It does sound like you just want a generic fantasy RPG system and legacy means little. Thats fine, but it shouldn't be surprising when folks dont want that. I mean, Monopoly would be better if redesigned as a Euro, but it wouldn't be "Monopoly" to many folks anymore.

 

[soviet]

It does sound like you just want a generic fantasy RPG system and legacy means little. Thats fine, but it shouldn't be surprising when folks dont want that. I mean, Monopoly would be better if redesigned as a Euro, but it wouldn't be "Monopoly" to many folks anymore.

This point applies to many people. 5e is drastically different from classic TSR editions, as were 4e and 3e. It's a bit rich to put 'tradition' on this pedestal while never looking further back than the year 2000.

 

[payn]

This point applies to many people. 5e is drastically different from classic TSR editions, as were 4e and 3e. It's a bit rich to put 'tradition' on this pedestal while never looking further back than the year 2000.

Who says I am? Plenty of folks hated 3E. Though, 5E specifically gauged the water temp before making decisions instead of saying anybody who disagrees is playing wrong and dumb. It seems to have worked out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I would agree with your point @Snarf Zagyg if there was even the slightest evidence that those who tell everyone they bounced off of 4e were to make even the slightest bit of introspection and realize that the reason they bounced off is largely due to their intransigence over recognizing their own biases and interpretations.

It’s those basic interpretations which make conversation impossible. And any meaningful discussion fruitless because of a complete unwillingness to admit that there is any personal responsibility for not liking 4e. This insistence that there is something wrong with 4e rather than a problem that exists between the observer and the game.

Which makes pointing out any inconsistencies in position impossible since the fault ever lies in the game.

Here's the thing- people who are trying to tell you often do speak with introspection. It's just that this introspection is inevitably rubbished. Or, when we try to have the historical conversation (as in this thread), it's impossible.

To use an analogy, every single time someone explains to you why they didn't like 4e, you immediately come back with, "You're holding it wrong!" Except ... that's you. Not them.

Let's try this. Someone walks into your restaurant. After the meal, they say that they love ice cream, and they want to order some. You say, "Okay, all we have is strawberry ice cream." The person replies, "I don't like strawberry ice cream." You insist that they order it and eat it. They tell you (unsurprisingly, after a few bites) that they don't like it ... because it's strawberry ice cream. Now, you can either argue until the end of forever that this is all their problem, or you can try and dig through their history and complain that it's their fault ("You once ate cherry ice cream, which means you like fruit in your ice cream, so you must like strawberry ice cream!"), or you can keep arguing that this is the best strawberry ice cream ever ... but it won't change the fact that you gave the person something that they didn't want. Just because you like something, doesn't mean other people do. Saying that other people have biases and interpretations and intransigence, without recognizing your own ... that's not great.

In a later post, you acknowledge that you don't care at all about legacy (or as other might say ... continuity) and that's fine! But that's also ... you. Not other people. Design decisions that work for you won't work for other people. You can't keep insisting that other people have a duty (a personal responsibility?) to like 4e! People like what they like. You can try and tell them what you like about something, you can expose them to it, but in the end ... you can't make them like it. Ever.

Do you want closure on 4e? Well, you can only find that in yourself. No one else can give that to you. People have told you why they didn't like 4e. But that won't give you closure, will it? Personally, I think it should be possible to have a discussion about the design process of 4e and the choices that were made that doesn't devolve into ... well, this ... in the same way that we can do with all the other editions of D&D. At this time, the design process of 4e took place from 2005-2007, which is closing in on two decades ago. We should be able to discuss it.

At the end of the day, you have to understand that you can't view "fault" as a binary thing. The very strengths of 4e that you like are also the weaknesses. And that's okay! For example, you know that I'm a big proponent of rules-lite (1-3 page systems) games. But I also know that there are a lot of people that absolutely don't like them, and will go on screeds about how you need to have rules specifying things, etc. etc. etc. I am totally okay with the things I like about those systems being drawbacks for other people. Very little that is truly good is universally loved.