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

[Joshua Randall]

Personally, I'm of the opinion one should push for reform in the areas that are most important to the designed gameplay experience, rather than focusing reforms on the parts that are most obvious. [...]

The gameplay experience is great and wonderful for me and other 4e fans.

there's little harm in keeping stats as they are, other than as a relatively small learning curve for new players. But it costs a LOT of community goodwill to make changes like this, even if the experience remains 100% identical.

No, at this point I want hypothetical 4e.2025 to double, triple, and quadruple down on DESTROYING community "goodwill". I am 100% serious. I want 4e.2025 to be the most clearly "not for you" version of D&D there has ever been. I want it to be proudly, defiantly different.

I want 4e.2025 to offer as much goodwill to the "community" as the community has offered to it, which is to say, exactly zero.

So I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth here because why not, we're just daydreaming. I want both
(A) a complete retro-clone of 4e that changes nothing and serves as a foundation for the 4eSR
(B) an in-your-face 4e.2025 that takes that foundation and extends it even further in the direction of awesomeness, despite what the "community" thinks about it.

 

[eyeheartawk]

A version of Starfinder that was actually compatible with PF1 (the way SF2 will be compatible with PF2 Remastered), instead of being just different enough that it couldn't be used together with it.

I mean, that's not really a PF1 product though, is it?

But yes, I do remember when Starfinder was being previewed at Origins and they were really pushing the idea that it wasn't just Pathfinder in space. So I'm assuming they did all that intentionally.

 

[Alzrius]

I mean, that's not really a PF1 product though, is it?

It could have been; that's the point. You posited that there was nothing left that could have been done for PF1, and I'm saying that even if you overlook the mountains of new ground broken by the third-party publishers, Paizo could have made new PF1 material out of, say, Starfinder. It could have been the "space book" for PF1 instead of its own thing.

 

[BrokenTwin]

The gameplay experience is great and wonderful for me and other 4e fans.



No, at this point I want hypothetical 4e.2025 to double, triple, and quadruple down on DESTROYING community "goodwill". I am 100% serious. I want 4e.2025 to be the most clearly "not for you" version of D&D there has ever been. I want it to be proudly, defiantly different.

I want 4e.2025 to offer as much goodwill to the "community" as the community has offered to it, which is to say, exactly zero.

So I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth here because why not, we're just daydreaming. I want both
(A) a complete retro-clone of 4e that changes nothing and serves as a foundation for the 4eSR
(B) an in-your-face 4e.2025 that takes that foundation and extends it even further in the direction of awesomeness, despite what the "community" thinks about it.

I deeply understand both of those points of view, haha.

In regards to your (A) point, do you think Orcus could fulfill that requirement? I haven't dug too deep into it myself yet, but it seems to meet the requirements. I kind of want to try to convince my weekly group to try a one shot with it. Not sure what license it's written under though.

Home

Orcus is a retro-clone of 4th Edition

sanglorian.github.io

 

[Celebrim]

TLDR- I think 4e's "failure" was due to a number of issues- from the economy to the marketing to the corporate expectations that could not be matched to the 3PP issues (OGL etc.) to the choices of the design team that prioritized design over the brand despite warning signs. I also think that it, like the Apple Newton, made design choices that continue to be debated, yet also influence the game today. I think that 4e did interesting things, and has passionate fans, and while it is not my favorite, I am very glad it existed.

I look forward to the time when we can talk about 4e without all the hurt and pain and anger people have on all sides. But given it's a decade later and this hasn't happened yet, I am not holding my breath.

-----

A not-very-brief history of 4e's issues and why it wasn't a success and was killed off,,,

That's a very good summary and I agree that WotC's rollout of 4e could be taught in a business class as an example of how to do everything wrong about the rollout of a new product alongside something like 'New Coke'. But, you don't even mention what I would put as the major thing that turned me off the product, and that was the core of their marketing was around what a piece of garbage 3e was. Every article and announcement that they made about the product they spent time trashing their own existing product and decrying it as a bad product.

Now for me, 3e not only was the product that brought me back to D&D, but it was in my opinion the best edition of D&D and was in my opinion aside from some relatively minor bad design choices that mostly manifested themselves at higher level of play, the best designed RPG game system ever made. The core D20 mechanic was in my opinion was the best core fortune mechanic ever designed. IMO, D20 took over the gaming market for a reason. And so if you start telling me that you don't like 3e D&D, and that you are going to produce a system that very much isn't like 3e D&D, and you start telling me about a bunch of problems 3e D&D supposedly has which I don't have at my table and which you are going to 'fix' for me, then I start thinking you are making a product which isn't designed for me and isn't going to fix for me any of the problems I actually had. At some point, I got the impression from the marketing that the design team thought 3e D&D was "badwrongfun" and that they thought 3e and D20 taking over the market was inexplicable, and that if you enjoyed 3e there was something questionable about you.

This was their own product they were attacking. They were running down their own product, which some of them were involved in the creation of. It wasn't like they were attacking a competitor's product, because D20 had triumphed to a degree that it could hardly be said they had a competitor in the market.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'll take a closer look later but IIRC, Orcus (not to be confused with other things named ORCUS) deviates sufficiently from published WOTC 4e that it is not a "clone".

 

[Tigris]

I deeply understand both of those points of view, haha.

In regards to your (A) point, do you think Orcus could fulfill that requirement? I haven't dug too deep into it myself yet, but it seems to meet the requirements. I kind of want to try to convince my weekly group to try a one shot with it. Not sure what license it's written under though.

Home

Orcus is a retro-clone of 4th Edition

sanglorian.github.io

About Orcus:

• It is fully compatible with D&D 4E if you ignore character themes (or house rule them)
• Themes in orcus costs you feat (are not on top of power level), but as said this can be easily houseruled
• Orcus had to change some words, but has all the mechanics needed for 4e mechanics (at least there was nothing i felt was missing)
• However, the classes are NOT clones. They are similar, and have overlap with D&D 4E classes, but they are not the same classes
• The classes also work slightly different (more complicated) than 4e original classes on which they are built.
• Orcus license is nice. So you can do your own work based on it and even sell the material. It was created such that you can do. You just need to quote the Orcus SRD I think.
• So you can build stuff for 4E on Orcus that was the point. You want to build your new character theme? Use Orcus. Want to build a new class compatible with 4E or an adventure? Can be done. (Might just have some slightly different termology).

So what one COULD do is build existing (starting with essential classes because it is simpler) classes in Orcus, using the changed names Orcus does use while changing all names.

This was, however, not yet done, and is a lot of work. And one had most likely still make sure that not only names are not the same, but also that ability text would not overlap too much to be on the save side.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Re: the other conversation about game improvements. I’ll say what I always say. Combat length is not a problem. It is a feature. Or the analogy I usually make, it’s like intimate time: if everyone is enjoying it, the length is just fine. (Pun intended.)

Most of what causes combat to run “too long” at the table is player and GM inefficiency, that would occur regardless of rulesets. (I have seen players make games with the simplest action resolution possible a complete slog. It’s a person thing, not a rules thing.)

Too much change to the 4e mechanics and it would lose that 4e feel.

On that vein, I think 4E prime feature is that it does really nice set piece combats.
So a change I would make is to make this explicit in the DMG and account for it in any published adventures.

Instead of having a dungeon with 10 rooms full of party level enemies, boil it down to something like 3 fights, each over several multi-room areas. Include guidelines how to handle "waves" of enemies (like when your fight attracts attention from neighboring rooms, but you have a few rounds until reeinforcement arrive. That's a more challenging fight then having a short rest betweem each fight, but there is still a difference between 20 enemies at once or 4 enemies in groups of 5 every 3 rounds.)

Advancement rules should also not expect too many fights per level, and define a reasonable ratio between non-combat and combat related tasks that need to accrue for a new level. I don't necessarily need or want XP (though I really liked the encounter budget guidelines, which worked fairly well, except maybe for the "wave-of-enemy-scenario", where you could definitely push the budget considerably before it wrecks the party.)

In turn, make sure your PHB ro at least the DMG advice about stuff that is not combat, and have meaningful but not overly intrusive rules for it. The DMG skill challenge rules were flawed mathematically, but I would also look into if it needs more mechanics. I would like some suggestions on how to set the stakes and how failures lead to compromises, and also I would like playsers to have some resources that allow them to say "this part is where i spend a limited resource to improve our chances, or to improve the outcome."

 

[Joshua Randall]

4E prime feature is that it does really nice set piece combats.

Yes. So much yes.

So a change I would make is to make this explicit in the DMG and account for it in any published adventures.

Instead of having a dungeon with 10 rooms full of party level enemies, boil it down to something like 3 fights, each over several multi-room areas. Include guidelines how to handle "waves" of enemies (like when your fight attracts attention from neighboring rooms, but you have a few rounds until reeinforcement arrive.

I believe this was always the intent, and I feel like that was stated somewhere -- one of the preview books? A preview article by one of the designers? Actually buried in the 4e DMG somewhere? -- but no, I am not going to [citation needed] because I'm just exhausted after nearly 20 years of justifying why I like my elfgame a certain way.

Anyway, yes, I think a multi-region set-piece combat with ebbs and flows like a movie was ALWAYS the intent of 4e combat. And the fact that the early adventures don't support nor illustrate this at all is a failure. A huge, very costly failure.

Hmm. Who wrote those early adventures? Oh. Oh yes, I see. That makes sense, then.

The DMG skill challenge rules were flawed mathematically, but I would also look into if it needs more mechanics.

Yeah, skill challenges are a debacle, although not that different from very similar rules in Fate or other games. So they were really only another few months of polish and better examples away from being perfectly usable.

The true debacle was someone's attempt to explain skill challenges in a series of WOTC articles. Who did that? Oh. Oh yes, I see. That makes sense, then.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That's a very good summary and I agree that WotC's rollout of 4e could be taught in a business class as an example of how to do everything wrong about the rollout of a new product alongside something like 'New Coke'. But, you don't even mention what I would put as the major thing that turned me off the product, and that was the core of their marketing was around what a piece of garbage 3e was. Every article and announcement that they made about the product they spent time trashing their own existing product and decrying it as a bad product.

I did kind of allude to issues with the current playerbase in H and I (the design team wasn't aware that the reception wouldn't be great and didn't do enough to sell it and outside playtesters knew it would be divisive, and some internal design team members tried to flag a few issues but were ignored).

That said, I have found that IME a lot of people's perception of marketing, etc. can be colored by their own experiences and tends to lead to more divisive comments. I tried to stick to facts (such as the initial announcement leading people to the false impression that a computer was required to play the game) and avoid issues that anger the blood.

Marketing is weird that way- I think that people often carry their own beliefs with them when they view the marketing. I think that they misjudged the controversy, but I don't think it's a good use of time to delve into the issue of whether they were "trashing" 3e or were trying to celebrate the release of 4e or whatever. People tend to have their minds made up on the feels about that.


(In other words, if the designers are wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. However, if they hadn't been so bold, they wouldn't have released a product that was so different and groundbreaking. Which is to say that the same things that made it not work for some people are also the things that made the fans of it so passionate.)