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

[Zardnaar]

13th age has MID LEVEL progression. splitting the 9 levels gained up into 4 sublevels. In one you gain a feat, in 1 you gain an ability in 1 you gain hp progression and in the last you gain everything else. The progression also is 2 times as steap as 4E and HP and damage gain per level is way more extreme to allow that.


So 13th age is mechanically more like 30 levels than 10.

Kind of the point I'm making.

In 1E you can kill lolth say level 10-14. In modern editions they've inflated her CR.

Similar thing with dragon design over the years.

 

[Zardnaar]

You may have missed discussed a couple of times earlier in the thread the (IME rare) Peterson fumble that he made in the 2024 GenCon edition retrospective roundtable discussion, that in the 5E installment he repeated the canard about 4E being based on WoW, despite multiple of 4E's designers having denied that in the immediately preceding installment.


Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift are both excellent. His prose got better.


How many campaigns of 4E have you played in above level 20?

You may have missed discussed a couple of times earlier in the thread the (IME rare) Peterson fumble that he made in the 2024 GenCon edition retrospective roundtable discussion, that in the 5E installment he repeated the canard about 4E being based on WoW, despite multiple of 4E's designers having denied that in the immediately preceding installment.


Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift are both excellent. His prose got better.


How many campaigns of 4E have you played in above level 20?

We never made it past level 7 in 4E. Got enough xp to hit 8 but gave up.

 

[hairyscotsman2]

13th age has MID LEVEL progression. splitting the 9 levels gained up into 4 sublevels. In one you gain a feat, in 1 you gain an ability in 1 you gain hp progression and in the last you gain everything else. The progression also is 2 times as steap as 4E and HP and damage gain per level is way more extreme to allow that.


(this is quite similar to 4E which has on odd levels new attacks and on even levels new feats).


So 13th age is mechanically more like 30 levels than 10.


People LOVE having progression. This is LITERALLY what is known as "rpg mechanic" outside the small rpg scene. So having 29 level ups is just something people enjoy. Thats why most modern games have this in there.


Also 4E has 3 finely defined levels of play. Each 10 levels each just feels elegant.

I agree.
1st to 9th get 3 partial advances and 1 ful level up = 4 x 9 = 36 levels, plus a zenith feat in 2e at 10th = 37 and it's one level per session.

 

[Tigris]

Kind of the oint I'm making.

In 1E you can kill lolth say level 10-14. In modern editions they've inflated her CR.

Similar thing with dragon design over the years.

No its exactly the opposite of the point you are making. I also edited in a bit more context. 13th age has not 9 levelups it has more like 36 because people like level ups.

Also having a less steap power progression in 4E is great, because you can, compared to PF2, use a wider range of monsters, have it easier to scale monsters to complete level, and have it easier to finetune encounters.

 

[Mannahnin]

I only ever saw this from him: D&D 4E - The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits


But honestly that was enough to never take anything serious that guy will say or ever said.


Not only was it extremly disrespectfull towards the people he interviewed, it also showed lack of understanding of game design and lack of research.


As others said one can only make 1 first impression and this first impression was one of someone who should never be allowed to write books about D&D

Hey, Tigris? I'm seven minutes into the video where Jon is with Rob & Andy and he says that the THIRD edition vid was "yesterday". Which means the 4th ed one where the designers denied the connection to WoW would have been the following week.

Is it possible that you're angry at Peterson in part due to chronological confusion on your part about which of these two came first?

 

[Zardnaar]

No its exactly the opposite of the point you are making. I also edited in a bit more context. 13th age has not 9 levelups it has more like 36 because people like level ups.

Also having a less steap power progression in 4E is great, because you can, compared to PF2, use a wider range of monsters, have it easier to scale monsters to complete level, and have it easier to finetune encounters.

Just to be clear are we talking about a 4E clone, modern game derived from 4E or overall principles?

Last year for example we had the should we play PF2 discussion. I was somewhat willing as I liked PF2. One of my players lent me the books. Few weeks later I returned them and said sonething like "I'm not willing to run thst". Star Wars Saga (4E engine) was a comparative breeze.

I'm looking at it from a.

1. Some poor bastard has to write it.

2. Some poor bastard has to run it.

Are you the DM or you have reliable access to one?

Bit more context I ran all the Editions somewhat lately and SWSE and the old minis game and used 4E engine in homebrew.

What's the 4E striker with a bit of controller mix?

 

[Tigris]

Hey, Tigris? I'm seven minutes into the video where Jon is with Rob & Andy and he says that the THIRD edition vid was "yesterday". Which means the 4th ed one where the designers denied the connection to WoW would have been the following week.

Is it possible that you're angry at Peterson in part due to chronological confusion on your part about which of these two came first?

Well even if this was the case. If he would have had any knowledge in game design or done his research before he should have known and not said this. (Its not like he did create D&D related content before).


Also as a journalist you never should go "everyone knows that X" since that is quite unprofessional. This video came out after the other, so I may have interpreted the part about "other video" wrong. So its less grave than I thought.


So instead of a disrespectfull, bad journalist lacking any knowledge in gamedesign:
He is just an unprofessional bad journalist lacking any knowledge in gamedesign


Which still for me is on the list of "authors which books should all be burned", but a bit less on top of the list.


Also the video came out 3 months after the other video. So there would have been a lot of time to add a banner to the video to excuse yourself about stating wrong things by peterson.


EDIT: Minute 1:40 he says that the streams where the game were played happened all up to 5th before (which was the other video I posted for 4E). So the stream of 4E did happen before this. The panel on 3rd edition the day before was a similar interview. So I mixed up a bit the order of when the game streams happened and when the interviews, but the 4E gamestream happened before this interview.

 

[FrogReaver]

And this is another reason 4e fans are always so angry.

I can post someone’s video or blog post or Tweet or whatever about 5e sales, or 3e sales, or heck probably how many plastic baggies Gary had to buy at the grocery store in the 1970s, and everyone will nod along and congratulate me for my journalistic digging.

But if I post a well sourced comment about 4e sales: well, see, that’s wrong / irrelevant / doesn’t matter because of various reasons.

Non-4e editions: stated claims generally accepted at face value.
4e edition: stated claims subjected to immediate attack and/or some way to reframe the argument so the claim, even if acknowledged as factually correct, “doesn’t count”.

I want to assure you this happens in every d&d sales discussion regardless of edition.

 

[Joshua Randall]

In 1E you can kill lolth say level 10-14.

I can't tell: is that OK with you? not OK? should gods ever be killable? should it be do-able at level 10? at level 14? at level 20?

In modern editions they've inflated her CR.

Can you please, please stop the loaded terms.

In modern editions Lolth has CR whatever. Actually that's only a 3e/5e thing. In 4e she has a Level, and it is... checks notes... 35.

What does that mean for 4e? It means she is supra-Epic; she is higher level than any PC can ever be. (Well, she's a god, check.)
Level 35 gives you her baseline stats: HP / defenses / damage / etc.
Everything else about her was built from scratch or "made up" if you will.

So where were we again.

No, it doesn't really matter in the abstract whether Lolth is level 35, or 25, or 999.

But it ABSOLUTELY matters that in 4e, she is scaled to provide a challenge to high-Epic-tier PCs, and not, say, to Heroic tier PCs. And for 4e, that means she needs to be level 30+.

 

[Zardnaar]

I want to assure you this happens in every d&d sales discussion regardless of edition.

Paizo pit sone numbers up around 2013 or 14. Presentation Pax East.

Ballpark figures they support Ben Riggs numbers.

They had 3.5 at around 250-350k which would put 3.5 near the bottom being outsold by BECMI black box. Pathfinder sold 250k.

Paizo never claimed to have outsold 4E total that's a internet thing. They did claim they were likely outselling them end of 2010.

I wouldn't claim absolutes about 4E sales one way or another until I see some concrete numbers.

Print run of OD&D is known I don't think all sold though as apparently they had some in the TSR warehouse in 1997.

No one really cares to much about OD&D it's mostly forgotten.