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

[Yalım]

My argument holds even discarding the use of the words problem and solution. Even doing something like saying that perhaps D&D 5E should have more balanced classes opens up the common counterattack: "4E was balanced and it was bad, so we don't want balance here"

I spend a lot of time on D&D reddit (shame, shame upon me!) and variations on this thought-terminating cliche come up so much. I want to come out of their monitor and shake the people writing them.

The logical path always seems to go:

1. 4e did [thing]
2. 4e did badly
3. everyone must hate [thing]

I usually see it in the context of "I like this thing but it reminds me vaguely of 4e in this tenous way so everyone else won't like it, sorry." Or in a weird elitist peacocking sort of way: "well you and I appreciate balance, but the unwashed masses would hate it. After all [mumble mumble] fourth edition."

I'll click on a popular fighter rework post on /r/UnearthedArcana and there are like 3 comments in a row all written like this. Like hey everyone, did we consider that maybe we're missing a casual connection here?

 

[payn]

I spend a lot of time on D&D reddit (shame, shame upon me!) and variations on this thought-terminating cliche come up so much. I want to come out of their monitor and shake the people writing them.

The logical path always seems to go:

1. 4e did [thing]
2. 4e did badly
3. everyone must hate [thing]

I usually see it in the context of "I like this thing but it reminds me vaguely of 4e in this tenous way so everyone else won't like it, sorry." Or in a weird elitist peacocking sort of way: "well you and I appreciate balance, but the unwashed masses would hate it. After all [mumble mumble] fourth edition."

I'll click on a popular fighter rework post on /r/UnearthedArcana and there are like 3 comments in a row all written like this. Like hey everyone, did we consider that maybe we're missing a casual connection here?

Well, let me Peacock EN World for a moment, but I'm here because that kind of thing is frowned upon and doesn't hold up to moderation when it crosses the line. Less wild west here.

 

[Pedantic]

I spend a lot of time on D&D reddit (shame, shame upon me!) and variations on this thought-terminating cliche come up so much. I want to come out of their monitor and shake the people writing them.

The logical path always seems to go:

1. 4e did [thing]
2. 4e did badly
3. everyone must hate [thing]

I usually see it in the context of "I like this thing but it reminds me vaguely of 4e in this tenous way so everyone else won't like it, sorry." Or in a weird elitist peacocking sort of way: "well you and I appreciate balance, but the unwashed masses would hate it. After all [mumble mumble] fourth edition."

I'll click on a popular fighter rework post on /r/UnearthedArcana and there are like 3 comments in a row all written like this. Like hey everyone, did we consider that maybe we're missing a casual connection here?

Very much this. Balance has frustratingly become a synecdoche for 4e itself, as of it comes attached to every other design goal. I've often described 4e solutions to a series of balance problems as simplifying them out of existence, which is so frustrating because between 4e and reactionaries to 4e we're unlikely to see any further serious attempt to grapple with them.

 

[niklinna]

I rather prefer stout .. but wtf is oyster milk???
TomB

You'll have to ask @Zardnaar. My best guess is that, like soy milk, it's what you get when you toss oysters in a blender and strain out the chunky bits. Contrast with oyster juice, which is apparently something that comes out if you just squeeze an oyster.

Both sound equally delicious to me. (And to be clear, that amount is well into the negative numbers.)

 

[Aldarc]

Not to derail this excellent thread too much, but the Emperor was not a Sith Lord, or even a Force user. Tarkin made it clear that Darth Vader was the only Force user left.

Not quite:

Grand Moff Tarkin : The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion.

This is in reference to Vader telling him that he senses Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Jedi order being disbanded and destroyed is not really the same as saying that there are no Force users left.

Also, why would Tarkin know that Emperor Palpatine was a force user? Or would he even count him as a "Jedi" if he knew?

Well, let me Peacock EN World for a moment, but I'm here because that kind of thing is frowned upon and doesn't hold up to moderation when it crosses the line. Less wild west here.

Maybe we live in different dimensions, because I see this sort of rhetorical logic ALL THE TIME here on ENWorld without any moderation. That's because in and of itself this particular argumentation or anti-4e logical syllogism does not break forum rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They did, but given the number of people who still talk about playing AD&D versions, I think it's not unreasonable to imagine a lot of the PF converts might have just continued to play 3.5 for a few years. I do think that the number of players who stayed behind and continued to play D&D may have declined had Paizo and PF not existed. But shrinkage of that group doesn't necessarily mean growth of the 4e group...

Right, there's always people who are happy with the game they have already. My sister @Gilladian ran 3.x for years and never really left. She played 4e and liked it and bought at least a couple of the books, but never saw a big reason to run it. I don't think that's philosophical or dislike especially, just no need to change. She has the 5e stuff and ran 2 long 5e campaigns for us. But her regular group still plays 3.5 and I guess that's just fine for them, they all know it and have tons of books etc. Even PF1e didn't really apparently do anything they care about.

It's not due to some principal though, we are doing regular sessions of Agon and Stonetop right now, and she's the one that got me to play Dungeon World too. I'm sure she'd have fun with BitD etc. as well.

Out in the real world this whole thing with editions and this or that type of game is largely moot. Look at her posting history, I highly doubt there's anything theoretical or arguing any point of view. It's all adventure advice and such. That's the reality of the vast majority, even of people playing for 40+ years.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ancedotally, the anti-2e pushback that I recall almost all came from the philosophical side: that TSR had caved to the Satanic panic crowd (bad) and in so doing neutered the game (worse).

The game-mechanics that drew pushback were invariably those that had been changed to suit that change in philosophy.

There was that crowd, but you missed the other major POV, that 2e was almost pathetically anemic in it's modernization of the game. Many of us questioned the worth of such a shallow and largely cosmetic update. Granting it's a cleanup and we did buy it! Yet our AD&D play became much less frequent and the perception was that the game was pretty retro and there was better stuff out there to play. TSR's decline started right about then.

 

[cavalier973]

Not quite:

This is in reference to Vader telling him that he senses Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Jedi order being disbanded and destroyed is not really the same as saying that there are no Force users left.

Also, why would Tarkin know that Emperor Palpatine was a force user? Or would he even count him as a "Jedi" if he knew?

clenches fist, grinds teeth

“Must…control….rising…nerdrage!”

Actually, that’s a fair point, about Tarkin not knowing; however, it is a reasonable assumption that he, being a high level officer of the Empire, would be privy to such knowledge. Even then, Tarkin may have hidden that knowledge from the other members of the Death Star council.

casually glances again at the thread title

Oh; also, Darth Vader is an allegory of D&D. You see, he represents 4th edition, which destroyed D&D, but 5e Luke, his son, redeems him, causing him to destroy the Emperor, who represents corporate profiteering. So, from a certain point of view, 4th Edition actually saved D&D, in the end.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I see two types in this. The first is the type that dont want no 4E in their D&D. They are just going to rinse and repeat their comment. After an exchange or two you can realize there wont be any nuance in that discussion and you should disengage. The second type, is that person who may or may not have the problem and is concerned about the solution. Remember last time they were told to just shut up and accept it, kind of like 4E fans feel now. This is the type that will have a nuanced discussion. Foster the latter, ignore the former.

There is a slight difference in scale though. If you got told to sit down and shut up during 4e, that was only at most for a couple of years. In return, we’ve been told we weren’t welcome in the tent for over a decade now.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My two cp about how 4e played out.

WotC was working its way towards a new edition. That was pretty obvious with books like Bo9S and the like. That was as always going to happen.

Then that 50 mil core brands bomb dropped. Imagine you’re WotC. You’ve just been told that you must double (or more) the entire RPG market with your new product. Something no one had ever achieved.

And you have six months to do it.

No wonder 4e was a hot mess. I’d point out that as successful as Pathfinder became, from the same 50mil criteria, it failed every bit as hard as 4e. It didn’t grow the market at all.

But all that aside. How would you go about doubling your market? Marketing to current customers won’t work. If it was going to work it already would have.

So WotC is in a massive panic trying to achieve the impossible.

4e’s failure, all of it. The abysmal marketing. The “abandoning” of current players. The huge outreach. All of it was slaved to that goal.

Had that Core Brands thing not been an issue, it really is my belief that 4e would have been rolled out much more gently, getting lots more people on board.

4e’s failure was that it had zero chance to succeed in the first place. And exactly what Hasbro said was going to happen, happened. DnD was put out to pasture with 5e.

It’s just that somehow, the perfect Storm happened and no one could have predicted the response and success of 5e.

I think this may be at least a part of it, but I dispute the 'failed' part. I mean, Mearles didn't get the axe and a lot of the game comes down to him! He wrote that awful adventure, etc. No, I think there were issues with the whole DDI business model, licensing etc. AS WELL AS presentation problems. Clearly even if you can appeal to a lot of new/lapsed players (4e got me back) enough of the older active ones were out or lukewarm to cancel a lot of the gains. Finally they went WAY far in the 'publish a huge heap of material ' direction, and that proved to be a poor choice.

I agree that the game itself needs to assert it's nature more clearly and define itself as a Narrativist system, but I don't think it failed, nor that it's primarily the nature of the system that limited its market. 5e's success is built on the success of 4e in making D&D a more viable and popular property. I don't think 5e, launched in 2008 would be the successful product it is without 4e to leverage.