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

[Mannahnin]

Yeah, I know it's still around if you look hard enough. It's just kinda sketch to sell people on, just more friction, you know?

Absolutely; although theoretically if the DM/person proposing the game could get a copy and confirm that it works and isn't some virus trojan horse, they could share it with their group.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Absolutely; although theoretically if the DM/person proposing the game could get a copy and confirm that it works and isn't some virus trojan horse, they could share it with their group.

Absolutely, but I mean, would you trust me to hand you a flash drive and go "Trust me, bro".

My friends know me better than that.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Wizards' perennial mismanagement of the digital side.

A fair complaint. However, not one that is unique to Wizards. In fact, perennial mismanagement of digital projects affects every business way, way, WAY outside the elfgaming niche.

Source: ... just read any book about software development written in the last 30 years, and probably for decades before that. (I mean heck, "The Mythical Man-Month" dates back to 1975! and was describing problems that were already old at that point.)

As far as I've ever seen the VTT never made it close to release

The vaporware that they showed off in the infamous video was just that, smoke and mirrors. However I will note that Wizards was far from the only company to show off a smoke and mirrors software "product". Much like "subscription service", we can lament this aspect of modern business, but we cannot say Wizards/4e did the smoke and mirror vaporware VTT any worse than anyone else at the time.

if WotC's launch of such a huge application could be completely scuppered by the loss of two people (for any reason, nevermind the terrible tragedy), then it was fundamentally mismanaged and under-resourced in the first place.

Point the first, almost all software projects are mismanaged and under-resourced.

Point the second, in my experience and the experiences of many friends and colleagues in or adjacent to software development (so: here come anecdotes, but I'd like to submit the are representative) -- the loss of two key people is ALWAYS crippling on ANY team in ANY size company on ANY project REGARDLESS of how well managed and funded it is.

We might like to think that large organizations have in place redundant backups and knowledge transfers and blah blah blah and some of that is true, but the reality is that software is still build by individuals working in small teams (or often: working solo). Thus when you lose that one guy or gal it is a BIG PROBLEM.

I will give you an example from my current employer, which is a huge multi-BILLION dollar company you almost certainly have heard of. We have a process that sends some key product information to our suppliers (trying to be vague); that process and much of the code was written by one woman. She is still, thankfully, with the company and not dead like the tragedy that befell the Wizards team -- but she is off in another area and this is, frankly, no longer her problem. It has been a COMPLETE DISASTER since she changed teams, as the new developers try to figure out what she did (I dunno, maybe it's junk? it worked, though), the new non-development manager tries to answer questions from the supplier that he can't answer, and everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else.

This kind of thing happens ROUTINELY at major, very well capitalized companies doing work far more serious than elfgaming.

Thus, how could Wizards be immune to it?

So when someone says "part of 4e's failure was their crappy software development!" that complaint applies to LITERALLY EVERY BUSINESS IN AMERICA.

The character builder we got was pretty darn good

Yes. It is easy to forget just how mind-blowing it was: for YEARS, a character builder had been the holy grail of D&D, and 4e delivered. We may complain about Silverlight or this and that, but the fact is the character builder WORKED (and still works, wink), and that had NEVER BEEN DONE in the past with the launch of a new D&D version.

(Sure sure, PCGen for 3e; but was not available at launch, and had all KINDS of problems.)

the two people involved here were both leadership and programming, taking two of the best and most important people out of the picture

Exactly. It's not that these were two random consultant programmers doing some niche to optimize performance of database calls. They were the key people on the team.

It would be like if, God forbid, Wyatt and Collins died in a car accident early in 4e's design. Not just two random guys who wrote some monster statblocks. Two incredibly key guys.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I want to get a 4E game going, if for nothing else just a nice change of pace. And honestly the biggest impediment to get people on board? The fact that making characters, especially with all the books and errata, without the character builder is such a chore.

I see this complaint a lot and I would like to know how 4e is uniquely bad in this regard.

Can you make a character in 5e without a digital tool? I honestly don't know; I don't play it. My impression is that to build a 5e character, I would still be looking at a stack of books and cross referencing and it would be a pain in the ass.

Someone invited me into a Deadlands game, and I'm trying to make a character, and it's an absolute nightmare between the books and the LACK of a digital tool.

I play in a Fabula Ultima game -- that only has 3 books, but it has constantly shifting errata/playtest, and the fan-made digital tool for it kinda sucks but is still FAR better than me making the characters by hand.

Unless you go to a "playbook" game like Apocalypse World, it's my impression that every F20 game (to use Ken & Robin term for D&D-alikes) requires either a stack of books and much cross-referencing; or a digital tool.

So the complaint that 4e requires a character builder to work -- to me that's like complaining about nothing in particular, or complaining about an entire genre of games which, sure, OK, but then how is this specifically 4e's fault?

 

[Joshua Randall]

Absolutely; although theoretically if the DM/person proposing the game could get a copy and confirm that it works and isn't some virus trojan horse, they could share it with their group.

Theoretically one might be able to find a code repository and inspect it oneself if one is super paranoid.

DM me if you want.

 

[eyeheartawk]

So the complaint that 4e requires a character builder to work -- to me that's like complaining about nothing in particular, or complaining about an entire genre of games which, sure, OK, but then how is this specifically 4e's fault?

You know, I don't think it's related to the game in particular or my own ability to make one. Hell, I've made characters in really crunchy simulationist games like Dragonquest and HERO etc. But I think the main issue is, if anyone is even passably familiar with 4E and they only know a couple of things about it, by word of mouth, it'll be that:

1. "It's just pen and paper WoW."

and

2. "You need a character builder because of all the powers, books and errata."

Now, I don't think either is particularly true but again, there's your friction between playing this and something else which doesn't have that preconceived baggage.

 

[payn]

While PF2e didn't literally overtake the household name as the market leader, you'd be very hard pressed to call it some kind of a failure-- this feels like a classic case of 'autopsying the living to see what killed them.'

Especially, since Foundry doesn't have a good tool to measure games played. Very few folks use roll20 or other tracked systems to run PF2.

 

[Joshua Randall]

1. "It's just pen and paper WoW."

(if they like WoW): "Well the comparison is pretty flawed, but it does scratch some of the same itches."
(if they dislike WoW): "No it's not, that's a comparison people make to belittle 4e."

2. "You need a character builder because of all the powers, books and errata."

"Sure, so what? You need one for any complex game these days."

 

[Joshua Randall]

Folks want to know why us 4e fans are bitter? We tried not being bitter. It got us ignored, sidelined, insulted, and ultimately excluded

Yes, this. So much this.

I, personally, have decided my response is to embrace the bitterness and that I will never accept anyone's claims that some anti-4e thing was done out of ignorance. I will assume everything anti-4e was done out of willful malice and hatred.

No, I'm not joking.

the edition that was supposed to be the "big tent", the edition that initially proposed a rules structure such that one table could play the game OSR-style, another could play it 4e-style, a third could play it 3e-style, and a fourth could mix bits and pieces from each, both in the space of individual character expressions (e.g. the Battle Master moving in a 4e-like direction while, say, the Thief moves in an OSR-like direction, despite being entirely compatible with one another) and in the space of table rules and campaign elements.

Hahahahaha! When you list it out like that it just reminds of what a ridiculous overblown claim that was prima facie. Yet when we pointed out the claim was silly on its face we got shouted down as haters; and later, when we asked what happened to the ability to play 4e-style at the table, we got the hate turned on us, told to shut the (bleep) up, or just ignored with the pretense that no, that wasn't what Mearls meant, he didn't mean that D&D Next would let you play it like 4e, he meant something else.

So yeah. Screw that.

4e classes are built role-first – I imagine the design process went something like this:

1. OK, so what would a primal striker be?
2. A barbarian, huh? That's an interesting take.
3. How can we make a class that uses primal power to deal lots of damage and does so in a barbarian style?

Yes. And it sometimes got them in trouble, particularly when they tried to "fill the grid" with what turned out to be poorly designed or half-baked classes. (They tried to be too much like 1e/2e with its pointless symmetry everywhere.)

"What would a ki-powered defender look like?" Uhh. Turns out not very like. Just stop, 4e.

There's actually another source, one that very often gets overlooked or ignored.

Soccer. [...]

Defenders, Strikers, Leaders, and Controllers are literally tasks players can be assigned on the soccer field.

Sorry, Ezekiel, you are not allowed to point out where 4e adapts something from the real world in a clever way. You are only allowed to point out where 4e fails to perfectly simulate the real world, even though it never wanted to do that.

/S

1. This argument, "it would've been great if it wasn't called D&D", is just a more subtle and sophisticated way of excluding 4e from being D&D.
It's the urbane, genteel way

It is neither subtle, sophisticated, urbane, nor genteel.
It is demeaning, insulting, nasty, and meant to provoke a fight, which it often does.

 

[Lord Shark]

Hahahahaha! When you list it out like that it just reminds of what a ridiculous overblown claim that was prima facie. Yet when we pointed out the claim was silly on its face we got shouted down as haters; and later, when we asked what happened to the ability to play 4e-style at the table, we got the hate turned on us, told to shut the (bleep) up, or just ignored with the pretense that no, that wasn't what Mearls meant, he didn't mean that D&D Next would let you play it like 4e, he meant something else.

Don't forget "well, that stuff will be in the tactical combat module."