Imaro
Legend
Can you point me to the actual post with the links... I saw where you said you looked at some old threads but didn't see any actual links to them.
D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023
- Thread starter Alzrius
- Start date
There were many, many threads on these topics in that period. If you search for posts by pemerton prior to 2009 that contain the word "fighter", you should be able to find a good chunk of them. Other keywords could be "metagame", "simulationism", "narrativism".
Hussar
Legend
I mean, c'mon @Imaro, let's be fair here. Was anyone actually shocked or surprised about the mechanics of 4e? They did advertise and preview large swaths of it for about six months or a year before release. The arguments were WELL underway, LOOOOOONG before 4e hit the streets. "Cloud Watching" anyone? They were pretty clear that this wasn't your Father's D&D. And in context, even the whole "Ze Game is Ze Same" thing was pointing to the fact that this was still very clearly D&D - you played fighters and wizards, fought monsters and played out stories that aren't exactly very different from what you did in other editions.
"Oh, I had not idea 4e was going to look like that and it wasn't until I bought the game, read it, started playing it, that I realized that WotC bamboozled me!!!!"
"Oh, I had not idea 4e was going to look like that and it wasn't until I bought the game, read it, started playing it, that I realized that WotC bamboozled me!!!!"
Imaro
Legend
Eh,I guess I remember it differently than you two... because I remember being told SW Saga (a game I thoroughly enjoyed) was a sort of preview for 4e and I also remember when I bought the core books and was dissapointed 4e was, again IMO, nothing like SW Saga.
I do wonder if, like you two are claiming, people were aware of exactly what they were getting with 4e... why did so many still buy it and then end up disliking it?
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Sorry; misremembered. 3.5 was YAETSNBN and 4E was something like The Abomination That Shall Not Be Named, I'm pretty sure.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
I think it's reasonable to say that different people consumed different amounts of the pre-publication materials for 4E and got different impressions from it.
And that the game as-published conflicted or didn't conflict to varying degrees with the preferred play style and agendas of different groups and players.*
And that overall the market/player base was in a less receptive state than they were for 3rd, probably less than they were for 2E, which was the other edition we saw a lot of folks not bother to update to, though it was less visible since we weren't all on the internet yet.
*(My main group, despite having some book release fatigue, was well-positioned for it. We were mostly also miniatures wargamers so we appreciated the tactical depth, and we had played the HELL out of 3.x and gotten exhausted by how slow and cumbersome high level play got. We were ready for something fresh. Some stuff still didn't make sense to us at first (I initially wanted to house rule back in 1-2-1 diagonal movement), but it worked very well for us, for the most part.)
And that the game as-published conflicted or didn't conflict to varying degrees with the preferred play style and agendas of different groups and players.*
And that overall the market/player base was in a less receptive state than they were for 3rd, probably less than they were for 2E, which was the other edition we saw a lot of folks not bother to update to, though it was less visible since we weren't all on the internet yet.
*(My main group, despite having some book release fatigue, was well-positioned for it. We were mostly also miniatures wargamers so we appreciated the tactical depth, and we had played the HELL out of 3.x and gotten exhausted by how slow and cumbersome high level play got. We were ready for something fresh. Some stuff still didn't make sense to us at first (I initially wanted to house rule back in 1-2-1 diagonal movement), but it worked very well for us, for the most part.)
Good point!
While I think we have been careful to note the parallels between the pushback to 3e (with the OSR movement) and 4e, there was also a significant pushback to 2e as well. Which, from today's perspective, might seem insane given that 2e was completely interoperable with 1e.
Nevertheless, there were a lot of people that absolutely despised 2e, whether it was because of lingering bad feelings toward the ouster of Gygax, a pushback against the simplification/standardization of the rules (and the belief that it no longer had the "magic" or, depending on your POV, the impenetrability, of Gygaxian prose), a desire not give in to the kid-ification of the game (removal of demons and devils and assassins, making the material and art more all-ages friendly), or because they believed it reflected an ongoing move away from the "roots" of the game and toward the Hickman-style narrative games.
Every change has come with detractors and pushback. Heck, there are still people today that think D&D made a wrong turn when OD&D went to AD&D.
Voadam
Legend
The development of the thief in Supplement I Greyhawk ruined a lot of the open ended noncombat non magical aspects of D&D. What, fighting men can't sneak around? Only one class can and they do it terribly with straight dice rolls? What happened to actually interrogating and investigating the scene to uncover traps, with player skill? Is the baseline now that everyone is incompetent at mundane stuff until high level? That stuff has to be mechanically defined by your class to do it?
payn
Glory to Marik
One blank up ruins a hundred atta boys. Blank ups were in no short supply in 08 either.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I see no reason both ideas can't be true: design was influenced strongly by organized play, and DM-driven play is what people wanted.
