D&D General Ray Winninger on 5e’s success, product cadence, the OGL, and more.

[SlyFlourish]

Just in case anyone here doesn't already know this, if you love 4e, please check out 13th Age. It's absolutely awesome. I can't wait for the next version to come out and, unlike 4e, it had no big VP oversight pushing it in the wrong direction.

 

[Tigris]

Canard? You know you are replying to somebody who was there, on the design team at the time, right?

Management wanted something MMO players would be comfortable playing and that would translate well to a possible future MMO. WoW was (is?) the top game in that category. Doesn't mean the mechanics of D&D 4E were designed to mimic or copy WoW, just to move D&D closer to that style of game. I think a lot of folks conflate the two.

Thats the point he was NOT there in the design team at that point!


He was not there. Not part of 4E initial design. And what he says does directly conflict with what the people say who wre part of the original design team.

Just in case anyone here doesn't already know this, if you love 4e, please check out 13th Age. It's absolutely awesome. I can't wait for the next version to come out and, unlike 4e, it had no big VP oversight pushing it in the wrong direction.

Well yes it does not use the grid. Thats a huge oversight.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And of course you could play 4e without minis or a battle map too.

Although IMO you are going pretty far off-book if you do so.

 

[mamba]

3. When essential took over, unfortunately the new lead really did not understand how much the 4E fans loved the new "martials can be cool too" and the first book released under Essentials was such a punch into the face of 4E fans, that even they did stop buying the products. It was such a tone deaf reaction. Especially since the Essential wizard which was released was even more complicated than the original.

I assume Essentials was created to bring back those who bounced off 4e, not those who were already happy with it.

It did not accomplish that, but just catering to the 4e fans was not enough to begin with, otherwise there would not have been a reboot. Once it was clear the reboot had not worked either, the whole project was abandoned

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While I agree, there is a difference . . . there is so much unnecessary hostility in this thread, and the other 4E threads that have popped up recently.

I don't think there's as much as you're suggesting. I think some people can't take being corrected on the facts and treat and facts as "hostility". Indeed, I think this is a major modern issue, both on the micro and macro scale. I think this has always been an issue in the 4E discussion too - people come in and actually make stuff about 4E, says things that are simply factually wrong, and when they get corrected, they absolutely get upset and feel they're "being attacked" rather than saying "Ok that's wrong but I still don't like it" (which is perfectly legit). I'm not saying you're doing that now, but it's common.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Monsters, particularly solos, definitely got better with essentials.

PS - didn't you design a kick-ass black dragon for 4e. Was that during essentials or before?

I have the honor of having designed the most powerful 4e monster ever published by WOTC -- Cryonax. A level 35 solo who definitely put the pressure on 30th level 4e characters. You can find him on DriveThruRPG.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Although IMO you are going pretty far off-book if you do so.

Yeah much as I liked 4E it wasn't easy to play without a map or representations (we never used minis, only tokens, but same deal).

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thats the point he was NOT there in the design team at that point!

Yes he was.

Sorry, I didn't make the distinction between design team and development team. But he has more insider info about 4e than anyone else in this thread it seems.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, that's why it's ahistorical and revisionist, because WoW wasn't like that when 4E was being developed. That's my entire point! The timelines don't fit.

Nor ever, actually, as I pointed out. You can make a (weak) case for 4E being MMO-inspired mechanically. You can't make any kind of rational case for it being WoW-inspired mechanically.

The famous comment from the WotC exec was about getting people on to a subscription, not the gameplay, which I very much doubt he even understood.

You can see a bit of MMO gloss superficially, with the powers in boxes resembling popup text for spell abilities that most MMOs had.

But the gameplay is certainly distinct, as it's pretty darn hard to use real-time rules in a turn-based game, and vice versa.

Heck, in terms of roles, 4e improved on WoW design by understanding each class needed a specific role and having each class do exactly one role, WoW struggled with issues like "the hybrid tax" all the way into Pandaria (when they finally relented and had each class be 3 "spec classes" in one package.)

Anyone who was tuned into the design issues that kept cropping in 3e during the 2003-2007 time frame can see the big mechanical changes for 4e were rooted in fixing issues that were core to the 3e engine.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thats a huge oversight.

You think they left it out by accident?

Or "huge oversight" means "I don't like it"?