A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[pemerton]

Nah.

<snip>

It wasn't a lack of understanding, but rather a feel of intimate familiarity. And it was familiarity with things that simply didn't have the right "D&D" feel to us.

I can only speak for myself. But I am comfortable presuming that my own view is fairly typical.

I understand how 4e plays and is intended to be played. And well before 4E was released I knew that it was not a game that appealed to my tastes.

My comment about the rules not explaining how the game is to be played aren't meant to suggest that those with ENworld postcounts in the 1000s can't work it out. I assume you guys are familiar with the indie games that influenced these aspects of 4e's design.

But a lot of RPGers probably are not.

And it's not as if WotC can't write these sorts of rules - Worlds and Monsters has pages and pages telling a GM what sort of play points of light will support, how it can be used, how the different fantasy elements - fey, demons, undead etc - can be used to create a fantasy game experience using the "just in time" techniques that 4e's situation-based design works well with.

But for some reason they chose not to include this sort of stuff in the DMG. The DMG has a lot of advice on the metagame of building combat encounters, but almost none on the metagame of building and running a skill challenge (there are general guidelines, but no almost no details at all), of designing and resolving a non-railroaded scenario, etc.

4th edition does have a setting, Points of Light, but the problem is nobody understand and/or likes it as much as something more...well designed.

<snip>

most of 4th edition is just as flavorless as they are.

Well flavour obviously is in the eye of the beholder. But after reading Worlds and Monsters I was very keen to run a points-of-light game. I find it well-designed for running the sort of game I want to run - one in which there is a loose framework to inject the "vibe"/"atmosphere" described by Mercurius in the OP, but in whicht the details are built up over the course of play.

I also found the monster lore in the MM was good for this - a bit more than is typical in a Rolemaster or Runequest monster entry, about the same as an AD&D 1st edition monster entry, and less than the 2nd ed entries which I found a bit over-the-top, and tending to answer all the questions in advance of play rather than leaving them to be answered during play.

 

[pawsplay]

LostSoul, to suggest an answer to your 3rd para:

I can only assume that WotC thought that there were many players like my group, who want a crunchier/more tactical play experience than a game like HeroQuest is going to deliver (half of us are ex-Rolemaster, after all) but who also were looking for a much less simulationist approach to world design, scenario design, scene framing, and action resolution.

So it's not just that they agreed with Ron Edwards, but also that they thought that the players who would flock to a narrativist-leaning game would be drawn from the ranks of those who love Runequest, Rolemaster and collectable card games.

And OK, when I put it that way, it looks like a pretty implausible hypothesis from the start!

Really, someone should have pointed out from the beginning that Mike Mearls was trying to recruit himself.

 

[pemerton]

I think they thought that the vastly larger number of people who play WOW represented a better audience than the people who were already playing D&D. Maybe that overlaps with your view, maybe not. But that is how I see it.

Well, my view evolved a little bit in my last reply to LostSoul.

Let me evolve it a bit more in replying to this.

I think WotC may have thought that, by using a few superficial WoW-isms, they could lure WoW players into fantasy RPGing.

But I don't think that 4e is a game that will give a WoW experience, for all the reasons that many others have pointed out many times before. Some of the members of my group are among the most hardcore MMO/WoW players in Melbourne (based on online hours clocked up, early adoption etc) but play D&D for a very different experience.

I really do think that WotC thought that these people - WoW players, CCG players, etc - would enjoy a non-simulationist, situation-based RPG. Like WoW it would have fantasy colour. Like CCG it would have a strong build-and-tactics element. Like an indie RPG it would use this colour and these mechanical features to drive situation-based play.

Anyway, that for me is the best way of trying to understand the game. But I think they squibbed/flaked a bit in the DMG (like I posted upthread) and to a much greater extent in their modules (whereas I might be Robinson Crusoe in my diagnosis of the DMG, I think nearly everyone agrees on the modules).

 

[pemerton]

Really, someone should have pointed out from the beginning that Mike Mearls was trying to recruit himself.

Pawsplay, I'm not sure how much - if at all - you're having a dig at me, but I thought this was clever, true and funny!

 

[BryonD]

My comment about the rules not explaining how the game is to be played aren't meant to suggest that those with ENworld postcounts in the 1000s can't work it out. I assume you guys are familiar with the indie games that influenced these aspects of 4e's design.

But a lot of RPGers probably are not.

Well, the ones with post counts of zero are not here to state their case.
But I've known quite a few and I really don't think the people you are talking about have a meaningful impact on the conditions.


I don't think it was a question of can't. (For the record, I still consider Mearls to be the best game designer going, despite 4E)
I think it comes down to what the goal of the design was.

 

[LostSoul]

LostSoul, to suggest an answer to your 3rd para:

I can only assume that WotC thought that there were many players like my group, who want a crunchier/more tactical play experience than a game like HeroQuest is going to deliver (half of us are ex-Rolemaster, after all) but who also were looking for a much less simulationist approach to world design, scenario design, scene framing, and action resolution.

I think their problem was that their reward systems don't function that well for the design goals of the game.

Imagine the difference in the game had they lowered XP from killing monsters (by 1/2 or 1/4) and boosted Quest XP by a like amount; couple that with changes to Short and Extended Rests - to get a Short Rest, complete a Minor Quest; to get an Extended Rest, complete a Major Quest.

Then they could give DM advice about how to structure an adventure by using Quests, building different Quests for the different player types, different Quests for different classes, tying Quests to "magic items", having conflicting Quests at the same time, the difference between exploration Quests, strategic Quests, heroic Quests, moral dilemma Quests, that sort of thing.

edit: I have no idea how many people like that sort of thing and it's pointless for me to guess. What I'm saying is that they didn't do a good job of 1. building the system to support it and 2. explaining how it works. It's easy enough to drift the system to make it work like that (my early KotS campaign and your own), but we already knew how to make that work! Because of that I don't think we'll know if people actually like that sort of system or not.

 

[pemerton]

LostSoul, the more I think about it the more I think that XP in 4e are not really a reward system at all.

Per Essentials, skill challenges yield rewards regardless of success or failure. Per DMG2, roleplaying yields rewards based on 1 hour = 4 monsters. Combat encounters will yield rewards even if the players flee or are otherwise defeated, depending on how many monsters they take down.

It seems to me that the XP system is mostly, therefore, just a way of pacing the character build system. And the function of the character build system, and the corresponding changes in encounter composition that will go with it (assuming the GM is following the guidelines and using published monsters) will mean that the campaign, whatever its actual story, will have as its overall structure "the story of D&D" - we started with Kobolds and ended with Tiamat!

Real rewards have to come from elsewhere - not the XP for quests, for example, but the story that achieving a quest results in.

That said, I think more guidance on quest structure and use of the quest idea could help. That's one aspect of the sort of gaps in the rulebooks that I'm talking about.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Imagine the difference in the game had they lowered XP from killing monsters (by 1/2 or 1/4) and boosted Quest XP by a like amount; couple that with changes to Short and Extended Rests - to get a Short Rest, complete a Minor Quest; to get an Extended Rest, complete a Major Quest.

That would pretty much eliminate the "problem" of PCs "going nova" (OR would shorten the "15 Minute Workday" to 5), to be sure- with no real gauge on how many encounters makes up a particular Quest, players would be a lot stingier with their resource management.

However, with the breadth of 4Ed resources being rather narrow as compared to 3.5 (due to their more rapid recharge), that could lead to a fairly humdrum game in 4Ed as players repeatedly spam their At-Wills and hoard EVERYTHING else.

I'm not saying the idea of Plot Driven Recharges is without merit, just that it would perforce require a slightly different structure than 4Ed's current makeup...probably more Encounter & Daily powers per level. Maybe even more At-Wills per PC.

 

[LostSoul]

LostSoul, the more I think about it the more I think that XP in 4e are not really a reward system at all.

Per Essentials, skill challenges yield rewards regardless of success or failure. Per DMG2, roleplaying yields rewards based on 1 hour = 4 monsters. Combat encounters will yield rewards even if the players flee or are otherwise defeated, depending on how many monsters they take down.

It seems to me that the XP system is mostly, therefore, just a way of pacing the character build system. And the function of the character build system, and the corresponding changes in encounter composition that will go with it (assuming the GM is following the guidelines and using published monsters) will mean that the campaign, whatever its actual story, will have as its overall structure "the story of D&D" - we started with Kobolds and ended with Tiamat!

Real rewards have to come from elsewhere - not the XP for quests, for example, but the story that achieving a quest results in.

That said, I think more guidance on quest structure and use of the quest idea could help. That's one aspect of the sort of gaps in the rulebooks that I'm talking about.

I agree with that. I'm not sure I understand Ron Edward's use of the term "reward system", but I think what he means is something really basic: a cycle of play that changes (and deepens the complexity of) the decisions that players make.

Expending Healing Surges and Daily Powers are a reward system in the way that I understand it.

In terms of "rewards" like an award for good or smart play, no, I don't think that XP work that way. XP change the characters based on play, thus changing the decisions players make. (I would personally prefer changes more closely tied to actual play - getting rid of builds. I do like the fact that you can retrain powers and feats, so if you know that you're facing Orcus cultists, you want to deal with necrotic damage and undead.)

(I recall hoping that each roll of the d20 would grant PCs some XP, way back in '08. That would highlight that what you do in the game should be important and each action would add up to change the PC.)

I think you're bang-on when you say that real rewards have to come from somewhere else - the story. That's why I think they should have pushed more for Quests to become a central aspect of play. Since 4E characters don't really need magic items, they could tie Quests to specific bonuses. "Once per day, as a free action, you can change the type of damage you deal to Radiant." - a Quest Reward after having a Skill Challenge with an altar of the Raven Queen.

I guess what I'm saying is that - in my opinion - they should have tied each swing of the sword, each Perception check to find secret doors, each skill challenge, to the "story" of the game that they were aiming for. Everything you do changes your character's relationship to whatever the game is about (probably heroic derring-do). That's what I've tried to do in my hack: create a cycle of play where actions that take only a heartbeat trickle up all the way to the end result, which is seeing if the player has what it takes to achieve his (personally-authored) Goal.

 

[LostSoul]

That would pretty much eliminate the "problem" of PCs "going nova" (OR would shorten the "15 Minute Workday" to 5), to be sure- with no real gauge on how many encounters makes up a particular Quest, players would be a lot stingier with their resource management.

However, with the breadth of 4Ed resources being rather narrow as compared to 3.5 (due to their more rapid recharge), that could lead to a fairly humdrum game in 4Ed as players repeatedly spam their At-Wills and hoard EVERYTHING else.

I'm not saying the idea of Plot Driven Recharges is without merit, just that it would perforce require a slightly different structure than 4Ed's current makeup...probably more Encounter & Daily powers per level. Maybe even more At-Wills per PC.

Good analysis.

I hate to do this, but...

Page 42.

I think that, if you put pressure on Powers, you might see a little more use of improvised actions. You'd need to include a section - a sidebar for different classes, perhaps? - that details some improvised actions PCs could try, reminding them that they don't have to rely solely on their Powers. Combine that with good DM advice on how to build and use Terrain Powers (DMG2 is good, but I think you'd need a different emphasis with what I proposed above), and I think you'd be able to keep the current system and get more "immersion" (whatever that means!) at the action-to-action level in your game.