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

[Thomas Shey]

Regardless, it's hard for me to imagine that any person who joined ENWorld in early 2007 and participated in the forums would or should be surprised by 4e.

That's certainly fair.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that most adventure design did not pick up on what 4e does well, there are rarely lone minions or or a group of minions that match the party's number so that there is a brief spike of violence that is quickly resolved as the party moves on, most encounter design is the full on match to a party where there would four or five minions per PC if they are used, leading to an in-depth drawn out extended cinematic fight.

The biggest 4e slog fight I was in was probably when three of us at paragon took on a solo death tyrant out of the MM1. After three or four rounds the really unlucky rogue was turned to stone, the fighter had the beholder pulled in and pinned down and it was him and my ranger paragon multiclassed wizard wailing on it for round after round, My using twin strike and every ranger interrupt to avoid getting hit while the fighter drew aggro and wailed on it. Lots of rounds after every daily and encounter power was gone just using the defender mechanic, the fighter's at will, and my flanking twin striking with a staff.

I still enjoyed it, but that probably broke it for the rest of our group for 4e as the DM and the fighter and the rogue were through. It was not long later that the DM switched the campaign over to BESM3e.

We ran into a few fights early on that got bogged down, like once the party ran into an Owlbear. The scenario was SUPPOSED to be "Owl bear stalks party in dark cave complex." I had a way to take away their light, and then they were supposed to get into being picked away by hit-and-run owlbear attacks, but the damned fighter just pinned the thing down and someone forced it into a corner and that was that. What was lacking here was dynamism. The terrain was static and as soon as the threat was static, that was the end of fun. I mean, the players actually had a decent time, they had to fight down to the very last HS and most of them were knocked unconscious, it was a nail-biter, but it was less fun than the table run time was worth. I can think of one or two other fights in that campaign that got similarly slow, one against a demon (I forget which type it was), and another against a wyvvern.

We had some huge epic fights though, one lasted 2 sessions! That was kind of a running battle and it had a bunch of different objectives mixed in (rescue prisoners, make a new weapon, etc.). Another great one was the runaway carriage, where the PCs were guarding someone and a bad guy jumped on the carriage and it went careening out of control with everyone either inside or clinging to the outside, etc. Classic stage-coach stuff.

 

[Parmandur]

I do think at the time it was relatively easy to escape 4e's gravity given the popularity and accessibility of Pathfinder. When I would go to the game store back then 4e and Pathfinder were pretty much given equal prominence. In some cases, stores were actively pushing people towards Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society. I personally had several cases where I would go to the store to buy a 4e book and have a store employee try to get me to buy Pathfinder stuff instead.

That's part of what made not really understand a lot of the vitriol at that time. For a brief moment in time people had real choices in that space. I got to be happy and so did the 3e fans because their game was on the same shelves, actively played and just as if not more available in organized play - not that organized play has ever been my thing.

I was legitimately happy for Pathfinder fans. I never understood why that could not be a mutual feeling. I feel the same way about some of the vitriol, although far less pronounced I saw from some 5e fans on these boards who actively cheer-leaded against Pathfinder Second Edition's success.

Personally, I didn't go for Pathfinder, I just stopped playing tabletop games.

 

[Campbell]

One thing I would add is that while some features of 4e, especially the explicit rules text and clear templates for powers, do seem informed by Organized Play the way skill challenges and rituals worked always seemed at odds with Organized Play to me, largely because they are real hassles to deal with when trying to engage in linear adventures which often rely on GM Fiat outside of combat.

I have noticed similar issues the like 4 times I played in a Pathfinder Society game for PF2 with it's much more explicit skills outside of combat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can’t help but wondering… I never used a module, in any editions or other TTRPG, I’ve always made my own adventure in my own homebrew setting.

I tried to sometimes, open a module, look. Through it, but everytime I close it and decide I prefer to make my own. I remember when I looked through the 4e adventures thinking that there was a LOT of combats, and more often than not in no particularily great battlemap.

So I wonder, is it possible that the critisism that 4e was just about combat, no roleplay and that the combat were too long came from players running premade adventures and using them by the book? Because I read KotS, very first adventure for 4e, and it didn’t look great… more like a succession of fight, after fight, after fight… then the sequel… looked pretty much the same…

I never ran KotS, or personally any other 4e module, and I'm mostly like you I find them uninteresting (I mean, I did run the classics back in the early days, G/D/Q, B2, etc.). I did READ KotS, and I had the same reaction. There were PARTS of it where MM kind half-heartedly tried. Like in the town there's a spy and a sidequest into a graveyard and some potential political/intrigue action, but it doesn't connect the dots between that and anything else really. You can get the 'red herring' to go off and mess with the Kobolds I guess? You could probably do some interesting stuff with that part of the adventure, but it isn't presented very clearly that way. The Keep itself is exactly as you say, a pure slog. The bad guys fight to the death at every stage, there are no goals except to get to Kalarel and kill him. The one SC that is presented, one out of maybe 50 encounters, is lame and perfunctory at best.

So, sure, I blame the modules for some of it, and WotC's reluctance to really come right out and say "This is a Story Game!" (even though they do say it at various points). It was muddled. I don't particularly blame people for not being familiar with that genre of game and 'getting it', but why keep misinterpreting the game NOW and harping on irrelevancies in its design that make perfectly good sense for a game that was intended to be played in a narrativist way? Those doing this harping aren't doing it IMHO for great reasons. Some may just be plain ignorant, but for others I think its a matter of being unable to admit that they just didn't get it, or didn't WANT to get it, and that it was often personal. Whatever.

 

[Voadam]

I do think at the time it was relatively easy to escape 4e's gravity given the popularity and accessibility of Pathfinder. When I would go to the game store back then 4e and Pathfinder were pretty much given equal prominence. In some cases, stores were actively pushing people towards Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society. I personally had several cases where I would go to the store to buy a 4e book and have a store employee try to get me to buy Pathfinder stuff instead.

Pathfinder only came out in August 2009 though a year after 4e.

Paizo did make it easy to continue with 3.5 because they provided both regular quality 3.5 one off adventures and monthly serialized adventure paths for the year leading up to 4e and the first year of 4e. They were at the top of their 3.5 game having had huge experience running Dungeon for years with both its one offs and their pioneering of three well received adventure paths in that system so they had a reputation for quality adventures that a number of 3.5 fans knew. This meant those sticking with 3.5 had constant new adventuring material that many considered high quality catering to people who just wanted one offs for their own campaigns or one shot adventures and to those who wanted full start to finish campaigns.

Then the differences between 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e were similar to 3.0 to 3.5, close enough that you can use Pathfinder adventures with 3.5 or use 3.5 material in Pathfinder with very little work to reconcile the small rule differences (grappling, small skill differences, etc.) instead of Pathfinder having to establish itself as its entirely own thing disconnected from D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't play 5e. The last D&D I played was 4e. The game I've played most recently which that features D&D tropes is Torchbearer, which lists original D&D, Moldvay Basic and B2 Keep on the Borderlands in its ludography, but not any more recent version of D&D.

My interest in this topic is (i) noting the difference between "I don't like it", "it produces nonsense fiction", and "hypotheticals resolved by ignoring the game's own procedures and principles produce nonsense fiction", and (ii) rebutting factual errors. See eg my reply to @Voadam just upthread: there are these widespread claims about the difference in monster maths between the MM and MM3/MV which are just factually wrong.

I think popular belief tends to become a sort of pastiche of reality. I won't mention real-world examples, but they abound. In terms of 4e the myths are things like there being some drastic change in 'monster math' (or that the 4e 'math' was 'wrong' in general, which I find untenable). Late 4e 'MM3-grade' monsters ARE considerably better designed in many respects. Low level humanoids and such don't really tend to be much different between MM1 and MV, as you point out. In other respects, even for those, there are design changes that are almost always real improvements. Like the removal of the Hobgoblin's Phalanx Soldier trait, which pretty much jacks their AC to 22 practically all the time. Its replacement, Share Shield can be bypassed in a number of ways, making fighting this monster more interesting (the MV Hobgoblin also has 1 less point of AC, so the +2 from Share Shield is actually slightly compensating for a minor weakness).

At higher levels things definitely diverge more, but its STILL not really about 'math', the hit point formula doesn't change, but damage increases! Frankly MANY MM1 paragon/epic monsters do far less than the recommended damage as well, so this is where things actually change the most, by far. Taking a creature that is doing 5 or even 10 less damage than it is supposed to, and giving it back that damage PLUS the increase built into MV's monster build rules can make a huge difference. Whereas epic standards were basically just tough minions in MM they become real threats in MV!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

I think you all vastly overestimate this 'dislike'. OUTSIDE OF ENWORLD I have yet to run into anyone who actually dislikes 4e. I ran into a couple of idiots who wanted to harass me for buying 4e books, but I doubt they'd ever gotten within 100 feet of the game. Such people existed in 2e days as well! In actual RPG play experience EVERYONE played if they were invited to my game. A couple of people dropped out of games, but I know one of those was hard core 4e, and the other was just busy or something. A few players THOUGHT they 'hated 4e' until they played, then they stopped mentioning anything like that (but this was actually only around 2012/13 time frame).

4e books sold quite well too, certainly the 3 core books did. I think WotC made a number of PR, business, and product line decisions that were sub-optimal. Going back and getting a redo by launching 5e showed how they did learn from, at least some of, their mistakes. In any case, the whole idea that the basic experience with 4e was disliking the game I find rather impossible to accept. Honestly, at this point EnWorld is like the D&D Universe hotbed of 4e hostility online. Go over to rpg.net for instance and all you find are WIRs and discussions of how much fun people had with it and people still playing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yup. If you ignore the dozens of hours of actual plays, two hard back books, thousands of words of blog posts, and dozens of other sources.

But yup. That one YouTube video was the sole source of information about 4e.

Regarding the preview books, a lot of people aren't willing to spend money on game books that have no game mechanics and in fact exist solely as advertisement the target has to pay for to read. I know I wasn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One thing that people don't get with Paizo is just how much it was BORN OUT OF WotC! This was not some outside company creating a new game. This was people who were all ex-WotC, had been publishing Dragon magazine (and not just behind the scenes) for quite some time, etc. PF1e was simply a continuation of activity that they'd been engaged in both within WotC and as a service provider FOR WotC. WotC's missteps with their online business model, and their 3.5e to 4e transition in general opened up the opportunity, but it was almost like WotC itself split in 2 and fought itself! I mean, Paizo and WotC are both about 5 miles from my house in opposite directions, they are very connected (and certainly were very very connected 15 years ago).

NO other company made hay on 3.5e to 4e. It was a unique opportunity that really only existed for Paizo. It wasn't created by the nature of 4e as a game, it was created through basic business mistakes of WotC and the existence of a group of ex-employees right down the street.