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

[Zardnaar]

Never seen Gamma world here. SWSE, d20 moder/future made it. Maybe different city?

Local shop has Dune, Cthulu, PF2 and some random stuff iirc.

 

[humble minion]

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.

Professional software developer since 2002 here.

In (slight) defense of my profession, I probably should point out that software DOES somehow successfully get released from time to time! Looking back, I can only think of a very small number of projects I've ever worked on that could have been derailed by the loss of two people, and this is in teams numbering 5 to 90, in tiny family businesses or major banks. IF you have someone who is a knowledge silo, you break your back to share that knowledge - you assign someone to shadow them, you assign other people their work in order to share the experience, you make them run training sessions on the material, you hire in experts.

A bit more in the weeds though. The 4e books were released in June 2008. I'm a little fuzzy on recollection, but I vaguely recall that the initial intent was for the online tools to be available at release time (please correct me if I'm wrong). The murder took place in July 2008, a month after the release of the 4e paper books. The application should have almost been ready for release at this time, but instead, it was in such a state is was utterly abandoned, with WotC/Hasbro believing that it was so hopelessly irretrievable that they simply wrote off the no-doubt-significant sunk costs. At this tie they should have been deep into fixing the final few bugs, doing last-stage testing of scaling, security, performance, etc, writing documentation and tutorials. If they were at that stage, then the murder would not have resulted in the cancellation of the project. Delay sure, but the thing would have been close enough to finished to be shipped eventually. But this was clearly not the case.

Now, as I know VERY well, production delays happen, deadlines slip, and I can't imagine that, given later tragic events, the development team had been working at prime efficiency for some time.

But.

A project doesn't get into this sort of state overnight. If, on the target release date, your code is still so incomplete that the companty junks it all rather than even try to finish, the problems go back a year, at least. Where was the project manager during this process? Why hadn't additional people been brought on 12, 18 months earlier? (Yes, I know more bodies aren't a cure-all, but the project was clearly just SO far behind that they were basically a necessity, although not the only one by a long shot) Why weren't they aware that 1-2 people were irreplaceable knowledge silos and take immediate steps to fix that? Why weren't the WotC decisionmakers getting frequent updates and demos of the software, so they could twig that something was wrong? Hell, once it became clear that the software wouldn't be ready in time for the paper release, why didn't they bring in an expensive top-of-the-line sort of hired gun to try to push the thing out in a hurry? I mean, this is D&D for freak's sake - you're telling me that you couldn't find a few software geeks who'd jump at the chance?

There is a level of very basic project management competence on display here. Now, I admit I've long forgotten whether this software was developed in-house by WotC employees or whether they contracted out. If the latter, it's kinda more explicable. Subcontractors fib about stuff all the time to clients, although WotC should have had someone on site full-time if they were even remotely legit (they did with BG3 I'm pretty sure).

This project was a very big deal for WotC - I mean, how often do you release a new D&D edition, and you've been promising the online tools since day 1? But it seems to have been treated with almost neglect. I sometimes wonder whether the computer side of things was pushed on an unwilling WotC development team by WotC/Hasbro higher-ups, and then deprived of resources by people who thought that the paper game should have been the focus. This possibility might explain what happened, but of course it's complete speculation on my part.

Regardless, this whole project was very clearly in deep, deep trouble long before the murder, and the loss of personnel was only a small part of why it failed.

 

[Retreater]

After being a 4E apologist for the last 10 years, I ran a 9 month campaign which ended last fall.
The result: all my 4e books have been removed from my shelves and put into boxes, ready to go into storage. (For those keeping score, I have no other gaming books in storage.)
Moreover, I disliked it so much that it's carried over into similar games such as 13th Age and Pathfinder 2. I'm completely disengaged from those systems as well as watching my enthusiasm disappear for Draw Steel.

 

[Micah Sweet]

After being a 4E apologist for the last 10 years, I ran a 9 month campaign which ended last fall.
The result: all my 4e books have been removed from my shelves and put into boxes, ready to go into storage. (For those keeping score, I have no other gaming books in storage.)
Moreover, I disliked it so much that it's carried over into similar games such as 13th Age and Pathfinder 2. I'm completely disengaged from those systems as well as watching my enthusiasm disappear for Draw Steel.

What made you change your mind? Had you never run the game before?

 

[Retreater]

What made you change your mind? Had you never run the game before?

Most recently, I had run it often at my FLGS for D&D Encounters. That was a very different experience than in a home game.
1) The sessions were designed to be short with one combat encounter and maybe one trap, puzzle, social situation. The home experience of running for 4 hours was exhausting and repetitive.
2) Players either had access to the D&D 4e tools OR sufficient play aids existed for them to take a pregen. In my case, I was the only one with the 4e tools, so I had to manage all the PCs.
3) Encounters seasons covered levels 1-3 then started over. In the home game, complicated strings of reactions, triggered actions, magic item effects, etc, slowed combat to a crawl.
4) Creating my own adventures was a hassle because I had to make tactically interesting encounters AND roleplaying AND award appropriate magic items, etc. 4E adventures are bad. I started off trying to run a season of D&D Encounters, but the players balked at the restrictions that were placed on the organized play structure (such as using daily powers once per chapter).
5) I'm not as young as I was then. It was physically exhausting. It's hard to explain, but I felt like I had been in a real fight every week after the session ended.
6) Times have changed and I don't think 4E holds up. There are easier, faster, and more satisfying ways to do tactical combat: Gloomhaven, Baldurs Gate 3, Pathfinder 2 on Foundry VTT, etc. There are skirmish-level wargames like Kill Team and War Cry.
7) The design isn't interesting to me. Let's look at what a 1st level character gets: 2 at-will, 1 encounter, 1 daily power. Each combat, you have these choices. Sure, there are more choices than you might have as a 1st level character in another edition, but the combats take longer, and you need more of them to advance (than you do in 5e anyway). And now that there are 30 levels, you need more encounters to reach the "endgame."
It's so boring. And I timed this. At 7th level, we were talking 45 minutes to go around the table once. I had a character who was stunned and unable to act for two of those turns. The player sat there and did nothing for an hour and a half, except getting bored and distracting the other players.

Essentially, the juice of 4E isn't worth the squeeze. Combats should take half the time. Scenarios should be laid out like you'd find in Gloomhaven. To be interesting, characters should probably have 5+ powers they can choose from. Actions should require one roll and do a static amount of damage based on the roll (and trigger an effect based on that roll). Average monsters should die in 2-3 hits.

 

[Aldarc]

I wonder if the designers of 4e had the time that they wanted to properly develop 4e D&D how much would it have changed things? Would the people who like 4e still like this product? Would the people who hate 4e still hate this product?

 

[Pedantic]

I wonder if the designers of 4e had the time that they wanted to properly develop 4e D&D how much would it have changed things? Would the people who like 4e still like this product? Would the people who hate 4e still hate this product?

I don't think it would have helped as much as we might like. Presumably we'd have better early adventures, better tool support, probably wouldn't have awkwardly mixed attribute classes and we'd have snappier monsters out the gate.

The Paizo split probably still happens, because that's driven by the GSL. That allows the existing player base to avoid change, which I think was clearly undervalued as a risk at the time, and I don't think the critical mass of new players was there to step in that 5e gained from exogenous factors, particularly because I don't see any way to get those older players on board as ambassadors for the game without completely overhauling the game's presentation and rethinking some core ideas.

The run is probably longer, Essentials probably doesn't happen, but it's likely the same underlying story.

Plus, it's not like anti-4e sentiment is entirely driven by problems in the release. It adapted a different series of both implicit and explicit design goals than the last edition that not all players bought into. The game's vision for what a combat encounter is, or how non-combat interaction should work are different than what came before, so no amount of refinement was going to persuade anyone who didn't want change.

 

[Retreater]

I wonder if the designers of 4e had the time that they wanted to properly develop 4e D&D how much would it have changed things? Would the people who like 4e still like this product? Would the people who hate 4e still hate this product?

I guess my question is "which designers"? Members of a team rarely have the exact same opinions. I think 4e struggled because there were factions between...
1) tradition vs new ways to play
2) HP bloat and low damage to make combats take longer vs. quick gameplay
3) bringing in WoW players vs. satisfying grognards
4) online play vs. in-person, physical gaming
5) third party support vs. restrictive license
6) attitude of expiring books, constant errata, "fix it in post"

The design goals of 4E are erratic. Some of this is because of corporate demands to be a big money-making brand at Hasbro. Some of this might be a "too many chefs" issue.

 

[Staffan]

The Paizo split probably still happens, because that's driven by the GSL.

According to Lisa Stevens, it was primarily driven by the folks at Paizo really not liking 4e. They were looking into ways of making the GSL work for them, but had "releasing the d20 SRD with Jason Bulmahn's house rules" as a plan B. After Bulmahn went to the D&D Experience in 2008 to playtest 4e, they decided to turn plan B into plan A, because "that's not the game we wanted to write for."

 

[payn]

According to Lisa Stevens, it was primarily driven by the folks at Paizo really not liking 4e. They were looking into ways of making the GSL work for them, but had "releasing the d20 SRD with Jason Bulmahn's house rules" as a plan B. After Bulmahn went to the D&D Experience in 2008 to playtest 4e, they decided to turn plan B into plan A, because "that's not the game we wanted to write for."

Not to say it was all sourness of the 4E system. I know when Paizo inquired about the GSL and what assurances they had the rug wouldn't be ripped from under them after publishing, WOTC replied, "none".