The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[BrokenTwin]

This one always struck me as odd too. Like, it's basically just a cleaned up 1E it's more like 1E than BECMI is and that was always part of the group. I did hear alot of derision about the whole Jim Ward led sanitization of the game though, so maybe that was a bigger part?

Given a specific vocal portion of the OSR movement, I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Reynard]

Given a specific vocal portion of the OSR movement, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think it is common for folks who perceive that some artform they enjoy is being "dumbed down" or "sanitized" for a wider audience to be upset by that. I am sure that Basic D&D (especially the 1983 red box) really angered a lot of first generation players. 2E certainly did. You see it now as well (for all the reasons we have talked about continuously on these boards).

It is in the best interests of the company to increase the player base. To do that, you have to leave the niche. but the thing about niches is that they never stay empty long. RPGs full of boobs and blood and other questionable S&S tropes have rushed in time and again to fill whatever void the current producers of D&D decided to abandon.

Complaining that "D&D is sanitized" might be accurate, but its simplistic and counterproductive. Just go buy the game that does what you want.

Unfortunately, fans often decide that they own a thing, which means they feel wronged when it changes or "is taken from them," which means they then feel justified being absolute jerks about those changes.

 

[Joshua Randall]

While I do really like 13th Age [...] it doesn't really have the tactical crunch that I think a lot of 4E players want.

Only because it doesn't.

I'm being flippant but also serious.

13th Age has a chassis for creating, oh, I dunno, let's call them "Encounter Powers" and "Daily Powers" that could have as much tactical crunch as you want.

By default, 13th Age powers are relatively low on the tactical crunch scale (by no means at 0, though!). But you could dial that up as strong as you want and it would still be recognizably a 13th Age power in format. Which would also make it weirdly very close to, oh, I dunno, the 4th edition of the world's most popular role-playing game.

I know it would be a ton of work (as was previously mentioned earlier), but I think a straight retroclone of 4E

How would you do that, though, given the constraints of the 4E GSL?

I think it would be much easier to take an OGL game like, oh, I dunno, let's call it the Baker's Dozen Time Epoch which is already close to 4e in spirit, and then hack at it until it more resembled 4e. Than it would be to work within the confines of the GSL.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Complaining that "D&D is sanitized" might be accurate, but its simplistic and counterproductive. Just go buy the game that does what you want.

Unfortunately, fans often decide that they own a thing, which means they feel wronged when it changes or "is taken from them," which means they then feel justified being absolute jerks about those changes.

I mean, you didn't even have to switch, really. By the time Dark Sun and Planescape came out alot of that was effectively not a thing anymore. Sure, you didn't have an Assassin class, but you could just as easily use the 1E one.

 

[eyeheartawk]

How would you do that, though, given the constraints of the 4E GSL?

I think it would be much easier to take an OGL game like, oh, I dunno, let's call it the Baker's Dozen Time Epoch which is already close to 4e in spirit, and then hack at it until it more resembled 4e. Than it would be to work within the confines of the GSL.

You can't copyright game mechanics. You can write a "whole new game" derived from the SRD and various other Open Game Content materials that happens to play exactly like 4E. You can cut out the GSL altogether. OSRIC did that to clone a version backwards in time, you can do that same thing going forward. It's just a whole lot of work. But I do think that's the very first step to creating a shared sandbox for everyone to play in. It's really what got the OSR started.

 

[Joshua Randall]

You can write a "whole new game" derived from the SRD and various other Open Game Content

Right... which are not in the 4e GSL.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Right... which are not in the 4e GSL.

That doesn't matter.

You don't need to engage with the GSL at all. The GSL is there for you if you wish to make a game that is an explicit expansion or derivative of 4E.

What I'm saying is, you can make an iteration of 3E with the OGL using the SRD and OGC that happens to play just like 4E restated using non-protected and unique terms. That's literally what OSRIC did for 1E, which had no open license of any kind and it's perfectly legal.

I went and found one of the threads about ORCUS that discusses it.

EDIT: It looks like ORCUS itself has its own SRD, so that would probably be the easiest place to start, rather than from scratch under 13th Age or the SRD. All of this is just to say that there needs to be a shared sandbox everyone more or less agrees to so that new material can be published for 4E. Without that there's not going to be much new happening, unfortunately.

 

[Joshua Randall]

you can make an iteration of 3E with the OGL using the SRD and OGC that happens to play just like 4E restated using non-protected and unique terms.

We are saying the same thing, then.

But... will 4eOSR have worse or better sales than OSRIC?

 

[eyeheartawk]

We are saying the same thing, then.

But... will 4eOSR have worse or better sales than OSRIC?

I know you're making a joke here. But, I don't think OSRIC has sold in substantial numbers for a long time. There are lots of other retroclones/OSR things that are better at most things. But all of those couldn't exist without OSRIC having been created first. It's utility lies in everything it did, except as a game you play, really.

 

[Reynard]

I know you're making a joke here. But, I don't think OSRIC has sold in substantial numbers for a long time. There are lots of other retroclones/OSR things that are better at most things.

I think it is likely more than the OSR community has by and large embraced the simplicity of B/X over the complexity of AD&D.