D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

I just listened to an interview with Rob Heinsoo, lead designer on 4E and 13th Age, on episode 191 of the Mastering Dungeons podcast, which included his thoughts on 4E itself. I thought some of you may find it interesting:

• Dave Noonan identified problems with D&D that 4E should be designed to fix.
• Rob was the only member of the design team with extensive experience with games other than D&D.
• Rob speculates that he was chosen to be lead designer because he is not a nostalgic person and wouldn’t keep rules around for the sake of tradition.
• The initial design ideas for 4E were very experimental, but reined back in during development.
• Rob credits the negative reaction to 4E being because it changed both the rules and the setting, saying that it might have been better received if the setting stayed the same while the rules changed.
• He disagreed with the idea of using PC powers as the means to drive sales of supplements, though he believes the supplements that were made were quality products.

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans. It seems to have worked for Pathfinder 2E, which changed the rules drastically but kept the setting largely the same.

I think blowing up FR was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE mistake. So much change. Good luck with this thread not turning into "4e sucked vs 4e was great"....

Hexmage-EN said:

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans. It seems to have worked for Pathfinder 2E, which changed the rules drastically but kept the setting largely the same.

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Maybe. But there are numerous other factors.
1) PF1 (and 3.x) were out almost 20 years before the creation of PF2.
2) PF2 had a long lead time and public play tests
3) Paizo didn't make fun of people who chose to stay with older editions.
4) Paizo doesn't have to be the market leader that D&D does - they can afford to shake it up.

Hexmage-EN said:

I just listened to an interview with Rob Heinsoo, lead designer on 4E and 13th Age, on episode 191 of the Mastering Dungeons podcast, which included his thoughts on 4E itself. I thought some of you may find it interesting:

• Dave Noonan identified problems with D&D that 4E should be designed to fix.
• Rob was the only member of the design team with extensive experience with games other than D&D.
• Rob speculates that he was chosen to be lead designer because he is not a nostalgic person and wouldn’t keep rules around for the sake of tradition.
• The initial design ideas for 4E were very experimental, but reined back in during development.
• Rob credits the negative reaction to 4E being because it changed both the rules and the setting, saying that it might have been better received if the setting stayed the same while the rules changed.
• He disagreed with the idea of using PC powers as the means to drive sales of supplements, though he believes the supplements that were made were quality products.

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans. It seems to have worked for Pathfinder 2E, which changed the rules drastically but kept the setting largely the same.

Click to expand...

Yeah don’t think it’s that simple. I think 4E was a storm of things that rubbed so many fans the wrong way. Leaving the setting would have helped for sure, but wasn’t enough alone.

Golarion did change though and it ruffled a lot of feathers. My theory is Paizo was able to pick up 5E fans looking beyond to help carry them over.

Zaukrie said:

I think blowing up FR was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE mistake. So much change. Good luck with this thread not turning into "4e sucked vs 4e was great"....

Click to expand...

to be clear, I agree with payn, leaving the FR alone would not have been enough to overcome all the mistakes of 4e (which is, btw, my favorite edition) made in presentation and technology to make it "successful" enough.

Hexmage-EN said:

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans.

Click to expand...

I really, really doubt that would have helped. If anything, it might have made it worse. At least with a new setting fans could maybe more easily let go of how things we "supposed to work" mechanically because they'd be playing in a new setting. If you're playing in the same setting you're familiar with and suddenly everything works differently, that shines a light on how things no longer work how they're "supposed to work."

Whatever you think of 4E, Nentir Vale was a great setting. The points of light idea is solid and still incredibly useful.

Hexmage-EN said:

Rob credits the negative reaction to 4E being because it changed both the rules and the setting, saying that it might have been better received if the setting stayed the same while the rules changed.

Click to expand...

I think changing both the rules and the setting made the negative reaction worse. I don't think changing just the rules would have reversed the trajectory of 4e, though.

And by "changing the setting" I don't mean merely blowing up the FR. I also mean changing the nature of existing stuff in general like storm giants and archons, magic items, etc.

Hexmage-EN said:

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans. It seems to have worked for Pathfinder 2E, which changed the rules drastically but kept the setting largely the same.

Click to expand...

I think that it entirely depends on the person. While for some it may be the case, and the PF2e observation makes a valid point, there's more.
Many people just outright despised the mechanics. Melee players appreciated the use of immediate actions etc, but the weapons and combat were padded. No more x4 spectacular criticals. You can imagine the casters, but it goes beyond the mere power. Stuff like planar traits for magic, components, or schools had an in-universe role that just felt great. Our setting also used Taint, which is in the 3e SRD but is anathema to the way conditions last in 4e.

I do like the idea of Implements in 4e as something beyond a mere Focus. I like them a lot. I think there is design space for both and I will try to import it in my homebrew, always wanted and never put effort in it. I also think that "[w]" is extremely brilliant and makes use of the damage die of the weapon, as opposed to the very crudely designed Tome of Battle in 3.5 in which similar effects just added a flat damage number.

On my DM side, I despised minions and I found the monsters defanged. No level drain (which was already weak in 3ed, and weaker in PF, I prefer the 3ed version), low damage. I understand that the design philosophy beyond the entire game was different, but just because I know why it was done, doesn't mean that I am going to like it.
Also the fluff changes of the monsters were outright incompatible with the setting I was playing. Who thought that those were a good idea? It's minor but it adds up.

A lot of nice ideas here and there though. As an example, all my Cyclops have an Hex (PF-Witch type) mechanic because of the Evil Eye of the 4e cyclops. Cyclops should curse (in any sense!), is right in the book! It also makes the monster less boring. There is this situation in which I find many monsters in 4e more boring, but the ones that are the "flattest" in 3e/PF have nice little powers in 4e sometimes.
Overall, good ideas but that I prefer to just import in a framework that works for me.

Edit: I forgot - the preview books and the tone they were written with did not help. At all.

If 4E was just essentials at launch, and if the online component completed, the game would have been successful.

I don't think you could have that drastic of a rules change without changing aspects of a setting, at least not without some jarring conflicts between crunch and fluff.

"Ze game will remain ze same" was a bad marketing and PR campaign.