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

[Joshua Randall]

It's not really high level as such. It's level 3 to 10 stretched over 30 levels heavily nerfed.

Dude, WTF, seriously. Are you trying to insult 4e in the most old fashioned and least creative ways possible?

Just… just leave. Get out. Go to the “we hate 4e” thread which is thataway about 16 years ago.

 

[humble minion]

Good post @Snarf Zagyg , except for your vile calmuny impugning bards. (I shall meet you at dawn, choose your weapon sir/madam!) Like any event in history, there's many reasons that the trajectory of 4e went as it did (I'm not going to talk about success or failure, I don't think that artificial binary is in any way helpful, a decade and a half plus down the track)\

A few minor comments...

A. At GenCon in August 2007, WoTC botched the rollout of 4e, causing many in the audience to (incorrectly) believe that a computer was required to play the game. This was the start of misconceptions about this edition that the powers that be never really addressed.

I think your excellent chronology/summary maybe somewhat neglects the very widespread lore changes, which started getting soft rolled out in the Grand History of the Realms in 2007, but which came out publicly at a fairly consistent rate with the actual info about the edition rules. Now of course lore quality is a completely subjective matter of individual taste, but in general, people notice changes they dislike more than those they like, and the enormous scope of the changes pretty much guaranteed everyone would be rubbed the wrong way by SOMETHING. Whether it be that your favourite FR deity was now a servant entity of a different god who'd they'd always hated, or whether you didn't like how the elemental planes were mushed together into the Elemental Chaos, or thought the new angels were silly, or were cranky you couldn't play a gnome straight out of the PHB, the 4e lore changes had something to irritate pretty much everyone. There was a whole lot of well-poisoning going on, which made people less inclined to give the edition itself a hearing once it landed. And when you have a game release that changes both the system AND the lore so dramatically - yeah, you're making it very hard for yourself. When you kill so many sacred cows, you're ensuring that pretty much everyone you;re trying to sell to is mourning their own personal Bluebell.

The 4e designers acknowledged that the final push was rushed by directives from the top, which caused them to make the classes too "samey" and left further differentiation on the cutting-room floor. So many parts that could go wrong, did go wrong- key parts of the computer component that was supposed to be rolled out were entrusted to a developer, and that person was unstable and it ended in a horrific tragedy (and also meant no product).

I'd argue these were both not so much a matter of luck, but poor management. Now to be fair, I suspect every edition is rushed to some degree (I know that the 5e weapon table was bodged together last minute without much testing, which is why rapiers are so much better than everything comparable, and why Versatile weapons are pretty rubbish and rarely used), but sometimes you can get away with it and sometimes you can't. Decent management should not be sticking to arbitrary release dates if the coalface people are saying they need more time to bring the product up to scratch.

Similarly, the failure of the computer component (I can with a complete lack of controversy use the word 'failure' here, I think) was not bad luck, it was dreadful management. The fact that the entire project could be ground to a halt by the loss of one person is one thing - this was a VERY well-known project managment problem even back in 2007, and WotC leaving themselves vulnerable to this was pretty much unforgivable. This stuff is my professional wheelhouse, and so it makes me grumpy. Where was management ensuring there was knowledge sharing among the team, or design documentation, etc? Why was the team so under-staffed, for such a major component of a major product release? It's worth remembering that at the time of the murder, the release of 4e wasn't too far in the future, yet once WotC analysed what code they had, they basically gave up on even cobbling a product together. This is at a time when they should have been putting the final touches on and preparing for roll-out, and the codebase was in such a state that they just had to throw it all away. That tells me that even before the murder, the project was waaaaay the hell behind and in deep, deep trouble. Disasters like this don't happen overnight, they take years. This shouldn't have been allowed to happen by competent project management, and it's made worse by the fact that WotC had experienced a very similar failure only a few years before with the 3e e-tools, and apparently had learned nothing from the experience.

If you choose to go swimming wearing platemail and with an anvil tied around your neck, it's not 'bad luck' when you drown.

I. Building on (H), we now know that there were issues flagged by members of the design team, but were ignored. In addition, there were some inexplicable errors (such as the monster hit points).

From memory, this inexplicable error was ... explicked ... by Ben Riggs in one of his recent presentations, in which he said that after MM development was largely complete, a higher-up who'd had no real role in the development of the system took it upon themselves to manually triple the monster hp based on personal vibes. Now WHY this was allowed to happen is pretty inexplicable I admit, but it does rub in the sheer level of dysfunction in the management of the project as a whole.

 

[Dire Bare]

As an example of just how much everything can be in the eye of the beholder... I'd began playing with AD&D. Moved onto 2e, 3e, and 3.5e. Decades of gaming. And what I saw of the 4e marketing landed very much for me as a combo of tongue in cheek and knowing/loving/ribbing this hobby we've had for a long time. It never occured to me as trashing or put down.

(That said, I will concur that this line of marketing/announcement was a super bad idea! It's akin to satire -- at least 23% or so of people will take the satire at face value or as an endorsement of what's being satirized. Poking fun at yourself works great when poking fun at yourself, and or amongst your friends, but it's a very very VERY dodgy move to do at a larger scale like advertising. )

Are you me?

I LOVED those short animated promos for 4E that gently poked fun at D&D tropes 4E was leaving behind. And I was surprised by the anger from the fan community here. Still kinda am.

But yeah, I think the WotC team felt like they could gently poke at D&D, because they were the D&D company and they also felt a part of the community. But plenty of fans did not take it well.

It reminds of the sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory". I freakin' love that show and its gentle ribbing of the nerd community. I have friends who loathe the show because it makes fun of nerds.

 

[Kannik]

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.

I had read some article before 4e came out where one of the team members (Perkins, maybe?) described how they ran a skill challenge. Which rocked! (At least by/how they described it) So I always ran SCs in that same way and didn't really read what was in the DMG except maybe to determine the number of success/failures metric. Whether what I read was different from what the DMG described, or just the method which was described in the article (and the contextual way it was lain into the adventure) provided the kind of guidance that the DMG ultimately didn't, I don't know, but they ended up running very well in my games and they "felt" good too.

 

[BrokenTwin]

From memory, this inexplicable error was ... explicked ... by Ben Riggs in one of his recent presentations, in which he said that after MM development was largely complete, a higher-up who'd had no real role in the development of the system took it upon themselves to manually triple the monster hp based on personal vibes. Now WHY this was allowed to happen is pretty inexplicable I admit, but it does rub in the sheer level of dysfunction in the management of the project as a whole.

Wait, are you telling me that the botched monster stats were ON PURPOSE? As much as I loved 4E, I'm starting to feel confident claiming it was the most mismanaged edition of D&D, at least.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Decent management should not be sticking to arbitrary release dates if the coalface people are saying they need more time to bring the product up to scratch.

And yet that is how the vast majority of companies are run. So I don’t think WOTC is any worse than anyone else in that regard.

Still, you’re right: GOOD management shouldn’t do such things.

MM development was largely complete, a higher-up who'd had no real role in the development of the system took it upon themselves to manually triple the monster hp based on personal vibes.

And yet despite the awful MM HPs, the framework it created was the best and most robust monster framework of any edition of D&D to date. Such that 4e released 3 of the best monster books ever made (Monster Vault, Threats to the Nentir Vale, and Dark Sun Creature Catalogue).

So even from bad starts can come greatness.

 

[humble minion]

Wait, are you telling me that the botched monster stats were ON PURPOSE? As much as I loved 4E, I'm starting to feel confident claiming it was the most mismanaged edition of D&D, at least.

Here's the thread (warning, lots of sore-point discussion of sales figures etc)

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

Aug 8, 2023

I made sure to attend Ben Riggs' seminar about the rise and fall of D&D 4E while I was at Gen Con. While it's been nearly a week since then (the seminar having happened Thursday afternoon), my memory isn't quite so bad that I can't recall the bulk of the salient points discussed there.

Now, I've mentioned before that I don't care much for Riggs' writing style. While he does good work, and his current book is absolutely worth reading, he unnecessarily damages his own credibility by openly presenting his own biases and opinions with regards to the people he's writing about (in...

• Alzrius
• Replies: 3,542
• Forum: D&D Older Editions

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The relevant quote (the ‘tripled’ bit might have been a failure of my memory, but the gist is there):

• Another example that he uncovered with regard to internal politics was that, right before the 4E Monster Manual went to the printer, someone on the management team (he didn't say who) looked at the book, decided that the monsters' hit points were too low, and raised them all. There was no oversight, no review, no playtesting (in fact, the lack of any sort of organized playtesting for 4E among their fan-base was another point that was brought up), and the result was that a lot of fights against monsters early in 4E's life felt like a slog.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Oh, did they ever! Cutting monsters' HP in half was a common houserule not long after the game was released. Which was hotly debated, but the debate was by how MUCH to reduce their HP, and how/if to compensate for it. I'm now feeling some VERY delayed vindication, haha!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Also no we cant just let wrong information about 4E be standing, because then other people will believe it again. This misinformation spread is the reason why so many articles and videos get so much things about 4E factual wrong as this article showed once again.

I embrace you as my brother. Welcome to the fight.

 

[humble minion]

And yet despite the awful MM HPs, the framework it created was the best and most robust monster framework of any edition of D&D to date. Such that 4e released 3 of the best monster books ever made (Monster Vault, Threats to the Nentir Vale, and Dark Sun Creature Catalogue).

So even from bad starts can come greatness.

The only one of those I’ve read is DS because I’m a huge Dark Sun nut) and I’m not a 4e guy so I’m completely unqualified to judge their quality. But the sad fact is that by the time they got into gear and started releasing good monster books several years into the edition’s lifespan, a lot of potential customers had probably given up. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and all that.