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

[pemerton]

I just don't get that. "Both your attacks will take a huge minus to hit," for instance, is about as unambiguous as you can get.

OK, I follow you, your interpolating a step that I hadn't taken the first poster to be suggesting - namely, that before implementing the newbie's action in mechanical terms, the GM paraphrases, in simple language, what that mechanical implementation will be.

In actuality, 4e is quite complex. Not as complex as Rolemaster, but IMO probably moreso than 3e.

I think it's tactically richer than Rolemaster - a type of complexity. The actual search and handling time on action resolution is quite a bit less - a type of simplicity. Character build is quicker to start up but probably more complex to manage - I'd call it a wash.

I can't compare to 3E very well, because I have only limited experience of 3E, but I personally found the 4e PHB and DMG made it clearer to me how 4e was going to run (when I first GMed it) than is true of the 3E rulebooks. But that could easily be a fact about me rather than a fact about the books.

If I actually had to recommend a fantasy RPG to a newbie, I'd suggest Moldvay Basic, or if they are playing with an experienced GM, then either Runequest or HeroQuest. Surprisingly, RM can also work for newbies provided the GM is prepared to do the search-and-handling work and the newbie only looks after the basics of character building. This is because there aren't very many traps in RM, so if you set out to build a PC with big numbers where you want them you'll probably do OK.

I think a newbie building a 4e PC would benefit from a bit of coaching - unlike RM, it's not just about building up big numbers where you want them.

Way too often, 4e is going to say, "Sorry, we don't know how to do that."

This is the only point of yours I really differ on. I'm not sure how much experience with 4e you're basing it on, or what sorts of things you have in mind, but in my experience this hasn't proved true at all.

To give a bit more content to that - I'm not thinking so much of minutiae of combat manoeuvres, but improv/stunt stuff more generally - jumping over swarms, using prayers in combat to get advantages against undead, concealing magic, using fire magic in a library without destroying the books. I've found 4e handles this sort of stuff cleanly and evocatively - certainly better than RM (speaking from a lot of experience) and I feel also better than 3E - with the 3E rulebooks, I really wouldn't know where to start for a lot of this stuff.

 

[cyderak]

4e wasn't as popular as it could have been because 4e took D&D and turned it on its head.

1.) Instead of re-imagining the characters we all came to know and love, they fast forwarded 200 years into the future. And unless those characters were an immortal race and somehow avoided being killed in a fantasy-based world for 200 years, they went the way of the Condor. There goes the nostalgic attachments anyone had to the D&D world of old.

2.)For me personally I thought it lost its likeness to D&D. From info I have gathered from talking in casual conversations with other gamers the concensus seems to be the same. 4th edition was a good game system but it wasn't D&D.



I'll leave it at that. I have a knack for pissing people off when I go on rampages about 4e and giving atta-boy's to Paizo's PATHFINDER.


Later.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Missed this thread due to Snowpocalypse and don't feel like reading it all to catch up.

The one and only reason I believe 4E is not as popular as it could be is that the previous edition is still fully supported by a company with a reputation for good material. Past edition switches have "forced" people to convert if they wanted new material. No need to this time.

 

[BryonD]

Missed this thread due to Snowpocalypse and don't feel like reading it all to catch up.

The one and only reason I believe 4E is not as popular as it could be is that the previous edition is still fully supported by a company with a reputation for good material. Past edition switches have "forced" people to convert if they wanted new material. No need to this time.

There are (at least) two problems with that.

The first is that the division was clear before PF was even announced. Certainly it has grown since, but it was already there. It makes more sense to point out that the reason a company with a reputation for good material decided to support a previous edition is because they realized a lot of the market was up for that.

Second, a lot of people did switch and subsequently left. So clearly the option to not switch was moot in their case.

 

[pawsplay]

To give a bit more content to that - I'm not thinking so much of minutiae of combat manoeuvres, but improv/stunt stuff more generally - jumping over swarms, using prayers in combat to get advantages against undead, concealing magic, using fire magic in a library without destroying the books. I've found 4e handles this sort of stuff cleanly and evocatively - certainly better than RM (speaking from a lot of experience) and I feel also better than 3E - with the 3E rulebooks, I really wouldn't know where to start for a lot of this stuff.

You call it minutiae, but to me the lack of a defined disarm maneuver is kind of a big deal. It bugged me in Basic D&D, it annoyed me that AD&D couldn't figure out how to do it, and I was glad 3e laid it out for me. As for those specific examples, 3e will give you a nice clean difficulty for clearing the area of a swam, prayers versus undead generally aren't effective unless you're a cleric, using fire magic depends on the context (rays require you to hit an AC, areas are not easily controlled without feats, and the rest is probably a Reflexes save vs. X), and you can conceal magic through a combination of Bluff and Sleight of Hand checks.

Just as a somewhat amusing tangent, the solo adventure in the original Red Box will kill you for trying to use prayers against undead if you are not a cleric.

I don't claim to be an expert on what 4e will and won't do, but a surprising number of questions have "page 42" as answer, considering there is like a whole page of 1st level powers for each class.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

This worked just fine in 1983.

Actually, it didn't work fine in 1983.

Well, okay, maybe it did; I was 4 at the time, and certainly wasn't playing RPGs.

Rather, in the far distant mists of time, I ran into many, many DMs for whom, "I want to do this cool thing!" resulted not in the rosy-tinted exhibition of martial prowess you remember, but a "No - you can't do that."

Sometimes, it resulted in, "Sure, go ahead; roll your normal attacks." In such a case, my prosy description was merely that, and had no mechanical effect - and that sort of rules interpretation works equally fine now as it did then.

What works better now is, when I have the Improved Shield Bash feat, and the TWF feats, and the Improved Bull Rush feat, I can say, "I attempt to stab the guy on my right and knock the guy on my left back with my shield," and I know that the rules will support the attempt.

 

[LostSoul]

You call it minutiae, but to me the lack of a defined disarm maneuver is kind of a big deal.

This is why I don't really understand 4E.

As far as I can tell, 4E is supposed to be a cinematic game. PCs are heroes and they do heroic things. It's hard to kill them and they get right back up at the end of the episode. Evil characters are frowned upon. The system makes heroic acts easy for the DM to resolve, with the damage expressions on page 42 and how actions are resolved.

I don't understand why they built a system that tends to make players focus on the "rule space" instead of the heroic acts the PCs are taking. If they wanted a cinematic system, why focus on "Push 2" and other such effects?

(It's not really page 42 that makes resolution easier - though the damage expressions help - it's how action resolution works. You make an attack: relevant ability modifier + item modifier + 1/2 level + class features. If it's greater than or equal to the relevant defence, the action succeeds. If you need to assign an ad-hoc damage value, use the table on page 42.

That's why grapple in 4E is just a Str attack against Fort instead of a complex chain of melee touch attacks and opposed rolls. Disarm would be just as easy to resolve, but the power system seems to suggest it's a bad idea...)

 

[pemerton]

But if you are claiming that the overall impact of 3E was not huge

Not at all. It seems to have been huge. I'm just a person who didn't play it, and didn't want to play it - I had Rolemaster, a game that I prefer for simulationist play - but who did come to D&D to play 4e.

Part of what I've been saying is that I think WotC must have thought there were enough people like me, and enough people who, having been playing 3E, would like 4e better, that 4e would take off. That is, they must have (roughly) agreed with Ron Edwards about the potential for a non-simulationist game.

And as I posted upthread (twice) it seems that WotC were wrong.

 

[pemerton]

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!

 

[BryonD]

Not at all. It seems to have been huge. I'm just a person who didn't play it, and didn't want to play it - I had Rolemaster, a game that I prefer for simulationist play - but who did come to D&D to play 4e.

Part of what I've been saying is that I think WotC must have thought there were enough people like me, and enough people who, having been playing 3E, would like 4e better, that 4e would take off. That is, they must have (roughly) agreed with Ron Edwards about the potential for a non-simulationist game.

And as I posted upthread (twice) it seems that WotC were wrong.

Fair enough.

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.

[Standard obligatory disclaimer: I do NOT think 4E is WOW. I do think 4E is a tabletop RPG designed with a goal of attracting non-tabletop playing WOW players.]