D&D 4E Another possible influence on 4e - CCGs

[Eyes of Nine]

In the other thread, it was brought up that 4e felt video gamey. Now, let's not argue that point. Apparently it drives people into edition warring, which we can see leads to thread closure. Also, I have never been a big video game player, so I never saw that connection myself. (My first and last big video game addiction was Doom/Heretic/Hexen in the early/mid 90's)

I always felt was that 4e felt a lot like a CCG - eg Magic the Gathering.

With a bit of planning you could set up cool combos between the various powers between characters and also within characters. My player group never really leveraged this part of the game to really min-max our party; but I saw the bones of it were there. I mean the Warlord (and most leaders) benefit was the combos they created with other types of characters.

I can imagine a lot of people didn't like that - no argument there. I'm not even sure I like it .

To me it was clear that CCG card effects behaved similar to 4e powers, and that their interactions and stacking effects were intended and considered part of the design.

I was a big CCG player (not Magic, but Vampire the Eternal Struggle) before getting back into D&D - so that was fine for me. I understand if others were turned off from it. And I also can see how it "felt" different from prior editions of D&D.

The irony is that 5E is the rules set that's seeing the MTG settings that 4e never got.

 

[Undrave]

In the other thread, it was brought up that 4e felt video gamey. Now, let's not argue that point. Apparently it drives people into edition warring, which we can see leads to thread closure. Also, I have never been a big video game player, so I never saw that connection myself. (My first and last big video game addiction was Doom/Heretic/Hexen in the early/mid 90's)

I always felt was that 4e felt a lot like a CCG - eg Magic the Gathering.

With a bit of planning you could set up cool combos between the various powers between characters and also within characters. My player group never really leveraged this part of the game to really min-max our party; but I saw the bones of it were there. I mean the Warlord (and most leaders) benefit was the combos they created with other types of characters.

I can imagine a lot of people didn't like that - no argument there. I'm not even sure I like it .

To me it was clear that CCG card effects behaved similar to 4e powers, and that their interactions and stacking effects were intended and considered part of the design.

I was a big CCG player (not Magic, but Vampire the Eternal Struggle) before getting back into D&D - so that was fine for me. I understand if others were turned off from it. And I also can see how it "felt" different from prior editions of D&D.

The irony is that 5E is the rules set that's seeing the MTG settings that 4e never got.

I can see that. I think the REAL influence from Magic and other games though was the formatting of the powers: Specifically the use of keywords and what they call 'Problem Solving Text' in Yu-gi-oh!.

Powers don't use vague flowery language to describe what they do. They have CLEAR and precise language that tells you exactly what they do and they use the same language from one to the other so as long as you understand how powers are structured, they can throw as many of them at you as they want and you can always understand what they're supposed to do at a glance. Maybe they add a new keyword from time to time (Invigorating for exemple) but that's it.

If an Martial Power has 'Close Burst 1' as range and 'Strength VS Reflex' as an attack you know you make an attack against every one within 5 feet of you but not against AC, against their Reflex defence instead. And it does so in a very economical manner that doesn't take up long chunks of text.

And if you were to go from that Martial character to an Arcane character, you wouldn't have to learn a brand new vocabulary, they were written using the same game language.

 

[Oofta]

I think there were a lot of influences, and yes it seems like MTG may have been one of them. The idea that powers were cards that you spent from your deck with other cards being spent as counters was pretty common with people I played with.

I only played MTG a few times though. Just enough to grasp the concepts.

 

[Undrave]

I think there were a lot of influences, and yes it seems like MTG may have been one of them. The idea that powers were cards that you spent from your deck with other cards being spent as counters was pretty common with people I played with.

I only played MTG a few times though. Just enough to grasp the concepts.

They did produce Power Cards. Honestly they should have been released straight at the start of the edition. Made keeping track of your character less cumbersome. I have some spell cards for 5e (mostly I bought the ones for Xanathar since I didn't own the book) but they're not as elegant and 5e spells just aren't as easy to parse at a glance compared to 4e Powers.

 

[atanakar]

Well the Gamma World edition that was published under the D&D 4e banner had random boosters expansions for mutations and artifacts. CCGs were certainly an influence in that case. It was not well received on the Gleemax forums at time. The Rage was real. Members were afraid the 5e of D&D would have random boosters. That did not happen.

I can't determine if 4e Power Cards were an influence taken from CCGs but they were a thing. WHFRP 3e had cards in it also and it bombed. I think many RPG players don't want their games to be «cardified» or «boardified».

Note that 2e had a set of spell cards on a box. Very useful to some players and DMs.

 

[Undrave]

I can't determine if 4e Power Cards were an influence taken from CCGs but they were a thing. WHFRP 3e had cards in it also and it bombed. I think many RPG players don't want their games to be «cardified» or «boardified».

I guess it depends on how good the cards are?

 

[atanakar]

I guess it depends on how good the cards are?

For spells and equipment I'm all for it. For skills, powers and talents I discovered I didn't like it. I gives the false idea to the player that they can swap them easily for other cards. It is one of the problems I faced with 4e. Players wanted to change their powers all the time between games to choose new more optimized combos. I totally broke traditional D&D character development for me - there was a bit of that in 3e but it was not as bad since the feats were written on the character sheet. It made them feel more permanent, less changeable.

 

[Doug McCrae]

With a bit of planning you could set up cool combos between the various powers between characters and also within characters.

You can do that in any game that features a sufficiently large number of abilities. Frex in 3e I used web, Evard's black tentacles, and cloudkill to kill a monster, plus fly to defend myself. The cleric had also cast protection from energy on me. In the same campaign I'd web opponents at the start of a battle, let the cleric self-buff for X rounds, then dispel the web.

In 5e the battle master's commander's strike is intended to combo with a rogue's sneak attack.

 

[BryonD]

I still am convinced that the marching orders for 4E were to convert people who were happy to pretend to be an elf online into people who would be happy to pretend to be an elf at a table.
That said, I never for a second felt that 4E really felt like an MMO at all. But it did feel like "a TTRPG aimed at MMO fans".
And, really, with all the comments that were flung around at the time about how they would expand the fanbase it isn't hard to imagine where they thought those fans would come from. And things like "easy to DM", "easy to learn", "consistent siloing of powers", etc speak the language of bridging this connection.

But the design team themselves were still all TTRPG players at heart and they did make an RPG.

But I do believe their hands were tied a bit.
It never occurred to me to consider MTG, but I guess WotC's own elf-containing product which was also more popular than D&D seems a reasonable add on.

 

[darjr]

I think they spelled out the Magic influence from the very beginning. The exception based style of rules were the stated main takeaway. Huh I think I remember reading it in the PHB.