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

[Ruin Explorer]

I think one of the really big influences which is hard to overlook once you see it is soccer or non-American football. Defenders, strikers, marking, how soccer players have 'roles', how some midfielders set up strikers and some other midfielders make it difficult to get plays working, etc...

Alternatively, basketball has most of the same stuff. Certainly 4E feels more like a "team sport" in the way you collaborate than other editions (not that others don't sometimes feel that way).

 

[MwaO]

Alternatively, basketball has most of the same stuff. Certainly 4E feels more like a "team sport" in the way you collaborate than other editions (not that others don't sometimes feel that way).

Heinsoo is a huge soccer fan — as in he likes to play it a lot. Mearls was playing a ton of FIFA on his game console(the real CCG influence?). And the words Defender, Striker and marking are actually from soccer.

Basketball has some similarities, but it wasn't the sport the designers were paying attention to.

 

[BryonD]

Almost.

4e was D&D aimed at Organized Play fans. Which, since Organized Play and MMO's share a lot of the same issues and approaches to problem solving meansw that it's more a case of parallel evolution rather than one influencing the other.

Things like clarity of rules, specificity, all that stuff, comes from the RPGA, not card games, not MMO's. Because CCG's are also meant to be played with strangers, again, it's a case of parallel evolution.

I think we are talking about two compatible things. And, frankly, your point is probably closer to the OP since he is talking about the mechanics.
But there were also unquestionable making a lot of comments about the size of the MMO world. WOW was HUGE at that point. (not that MMOs are not still huge, but it stood out as both dominant and very D&Dish).

How big was the Organized Play community at that point in time? (particularly excluding existing TTRPG gamers)

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I think we are talking about two compatible things. And, frankly, your point is probably closer to the OP since he is talking about the mechanics.
But there were also unquestionable making a lot of comments about the size of the MMO world. WOW was HUGE at that point. (not that MMOs are not still huge, but it stood out as both dominant and very D&Dish).

How big was the Organized Play community at that point in time? (particularly excluding existing TTRPG gamers)

So I can't discount the impact of MMOs on design of 4e. I owned a game store between 1998 and 2006. So I saw the release of 3.x and the D20 glut. For a while there, D&D/D20 was HUUGE. And then 2002-2006 we saw a decline due to a variety of factors - burnout no doubt, the glut also - and 100% I heard from my customers' mouths that they were playing WoW and/or EverQuest. So during that liminal design phase, they were definitely aware that MMOs were eating into market share.

And then of course D&D Minis game was very popular, MtG was hugely popular. All that was out in the game-o-sphere and had to influence the designers. I'm not sure how much was an explicit mandate from marketing and branding to "get those MMO'ers to play D&D" as much as it was just in the zeitgeist at the time.

What I don't think happened, (and as a product manager now in software a cardinal sin) is there was no discussion with existing players to understand what was important to them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But there were also unquestionable making a lot of comments about the size of the MMO world. WOW was HUGE at that point. (not that MMOs are not still huge, but it stood out as both dominant and very D&Dish).

This is correct - WoW was much bigger back then. And MMOs in general were - population-wise they're usually smaller now (WoW still peaks about the same size when a new expansion comes out, but its brief), and the really big difference is pop-culture. WoW hadn't reached it's pop-culture zenith when 4E was being developed, but it was certainly ascendant.

I agree too that your theories are largely compatible. I do think there was an idea that a new version of D&D that felt modern and exciting, and worked really well on a VTT or in organised play, could piggy-back on the general perceived popularity of video-game RPGs, both MMORPGs and Bioware-type games, to encourage people to come and try these previously "pen and paper" RPGs in a new format.

Organised Play as the same stuff as AL now was big, really big, back then, with 3.XE. At least it seemed to be to me - it was talked about more than AL is now, and I knew more people, online and off, whose primary mode of play was that. Also there were more FLGSes and the like back then to host it.

4E was very consciously designed in a way that would work well on a VTT. Core mechanics wouldn't work well in an MMORPG, because it's highly random, movement-centric and turn-based (neither translates well, as the Neverwinter MMO, which is based on 4E, shows - it might as well be based on 5E or 3E in a lot of ways). But for a VTT? Absolutely ideal. Stuff like the extremely complex initiative-fiddling and so on? That would work really well in a fully-integrated VTT. And we know that was in production from early on with 4E (before launch). It just didn't work out because of the tragedy then because of the studio they picked after that making decisions that ensured it couldn't work out.

The CCG inspiration is part of that of course, in that the abilities are very clear in how they operate, which is ideal for a VTT, because you could potentially do absolutely full integration with minimum hassle, and with minimum "asking the DM". Instead of player saying "I want to do this", they could have simply chosen the power they want, and clicked where they wanted it to go.

The only thing that conflicts with VTT stuff (and also would have conflicted with any kind of videogame) is the heavy post-L11 focus on interrupts and reactions and immediate actions. That's much harder to fully integrate, and suggests me that maybe they weren't totally married to the idea. I mean, if I was making a video game of 4E, as a turn-based tactics game, using the actual rules as much as possible, I'd have to remove a lot of the immediate action (the ones used out-of-turn) and interrupt abilities, because you just couldn't code that in in an attractive way (even reactions are problematic, because they break gameplay flow if not automated like they are in say, XCOM, but as they have a cost, and you don't pre-set them, you can't really fully automate them). So I'm not sure about that. It would work better in a VTT at least than a game (but works best in a real-world game).

 

[Lanefan]

Yes. And for 3E as well, MtG was cited as a specific inspiration. I don't think there's any doubt at all that CCGs influenced 4E's design, people have explained well in this thread. Everything post-WotC has that going on. I honestly feel like some RPGs could use more CCG influence when it comes to clarity.

The trick there is to pull this off without the rulebooks becoming as dry as dust.

I mean, have you ever tried to read the official rules for M:tG?

That's true but it's also true for 3E (and 5E, as not everything that can't be tripped is immune to prone, which would make it immune to trip), where they failed to make an exception from the trip rules for some creature that obviously couldn't be tripped That's where I bumped into it first.

Would it really have been so hard, in any of these editions, to put a short clause into the 'trip' write-up stating that in order to be tripped a creature has to have a non-fluid upright stance to be tripped from and thus jellies, oozes and similar creatures are immune?

I also never saw a PC cast Fireball in 4E. But I did see them set SO MUCH on fire oh my god. Half the adventures ended with something on fire, in large part due to the stunt rules.

Given how badly AoE damage spells have been nerfed as the editions go by, I'm not surprised you never saw any Fireballs.

Curious: how often did you see Lightning Bolts getting cast?

 

[Lanefan]

Organised Play as the same stuff as AL now was big, really big, back then, with 3.XE. At least it seemed to be to me - it was talked about more than AL is now, and I knew more people, online and off, whose primary mode of play was that. Also there were more FLGSes and the like back then to host it.

This goes back even further - the RPGA in 1e-2e days had some moments of (relative) bigness as well; but IME wasn't taken very seriously by home players.

That said, it appears to me there was a change in philosophy once WotC took the helm: both 3e and 4e were designed more with organized play in mind in hopes that doing so would push the general player base toward all playing the same game: they wanted to reduce (or ideally eliminate!) houserules and by-table variances in how the game was played. Another reflection of the M:tG mindset.

And yes, Gygax took the same approach in the 1e DMG, that every table should be the same...except for where he didn't, and encouraged DMs to change things up to make the game their own.

5e went back more toward the philosophy of 'make the game your own' via its rulings-not-rules mantra; a welcome relief.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Curious: how often did you see Lightning Bolts getting cast?

A handful of times, because we had a Wizard at one point who used that. It was a really weird spell in 4E because it was a precision three-target spell which did fairly low damage.

There are a lot of things I loved about 4E, but Wizards did not translate terribly well to it.

And yes, Gygax took the same approach in the 1e DMG, that every table should be the same...except for where he didn't, and encouraged DMs to change things up to make the game their own.

Yes, quite right, I first came across this strange-seeming attitude in his book Role-Playing Mastery, which I read when I was about 13, was appalled by, and it seemed like it was very much at odds with other I knew him to have said (via Dragon etc.)!

Would it really have been so hard, in any of these editions, to put a short clause into the 'trip' write-up stating that in order to be tripped a creature has to have a non-fluid upright stance to be tripped from and thus jellies, oozes and similar creatures are immune?

Probably not, but they didn't. I think even if they had, they'd have missed some later creature off the list. I feel with exception-based design, it's better to specify the exception on the monster, not the ability or the like. Like, if a monster is immune to trip, that should go on it's stat-block (which it didn't, generally, in 3E). I notice that 5E does with ghouls and elves being immune to their paralysis. I found that out playing the Strahd campaign, the DM was like "save vs CON" (I think) and I was like "Is that for ghoul paralysis, pretty sure as a half-elf I'm immune..." even though I'd never read the 5E ghoul details. But I then became unsure because I realized it wasn't in the racial traits for an Elf anymore. Then he actually checked the MM entry though, and there it was! Elves are immune!

Which I dunno that's the right place for that, but I guess it's fine given how little it comes up.

 

[Lanefan]

Probably not, but they didn't. I think even if they had, they'd have missed some later creature off the list. I feel with exception-based design, it's better to specify the exception on the monster, not the ability or the like. Like, if a monster is immune to trip, that should go on it's stat-block (which it didn't, generally, in 3E).

Sure, for oddball stuff, but a blanket immunity such as undead vs cold or jellies vs trip could be spelled out once rather than in every applicable monster write-up, to save space.

I notice that 5E does with ghouls and elves being immune to their paralysis. I found that out playing the Strahd campaign, the DM was like "save vs CON" (I think) and I was like "Is that for ghoul paralysis, pretty sure as a half-elf I'm immune..." even though I'd never read the 5E ghoul details. But I then became unsure because I realized it wasn't in the racial traits for an Elf anymore. Then he actually checked the MM entry though, and there it was! Elves are immune!

Were I the DM I'd look at that and say "Elves are immune - but you're only Half-Elf, which means you're only half-immune. Roll any die, low your immunity works this time, high it doesn't and you have to save like everyone else."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Were I the DM I'd look at that and say "Elves are immune - but you're only Half-Elf, which means you're only half-immune. Roll any die, low your immunity works this time, high it doesn't and you have to save like everyone else."

Such cruelty! To be fair, in earlier editions HEs had full immunity, and in 5E it's not precisely spelled out whether they "count as elves" for elf-stuff. They did in 3E and 4E, so I think we can assume they do, but it's not certain. The paralyzation should probably key off "Fey Ancestry" (the shared trait of all "things wot are elfs" in 5E), but it doesn't say that, it says "elf" so... yeah!