D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Mannahnin]

I don't know if 4e was similar to an MMO but per OP it seems that the wotc execs wanted to make a game that was similar to an MMO and intervened in the game design process to that end.

I'm not sure this is quite it. According to Riggs, they wanted something which would lure back MMO players and which would get that ongoing subscription-type money. And they wanted something people could play together online. We know from that one old designer interview quote that they took at least a little influence from MMOs, as they generally do with other big and popular games when a new edition is in development.

 

[nevin]

I wouldn't be shocked if that "odd/even" mechanic came from Rob Heinsoo, since a similar mechanic exists (to general dislike) in 13th Age.

if 1e sold one million copies it was between 1972 and 1989, (17 years) 2e sold from 1989 to 2000, (11 years) third edition sold from 2000 to 2008 ( 8 years), 4th edition got 6. now we are at 7 for 5e and they are squeezing the cash cow again. The problem with these metrics is he completely left out context. 2nd edition bombed because TSR made bad decisions and was going bankrupt, third edition did exactly what pathfinder 1e and 2e did and split off the playerbase for a "new game" , 4th tried to replicate pathfinder and failed utterly.

The big thing that stands out ot me.

I made sure to attend Ben Riggs' seminar about the rise and fall of D&D 4E while I was at Gen Con. While it's been nearly a week since then (the seminar having happened Thursday afternoon), my memory isn't quite so bad that I can't recall the bulk of the salient points discussed there.

Now, I've mentioned before that I don't care much for Riggs' writing style. While he does good work, and his current book is absolutely worth reading, he unnecessarily damages his own credibility by openly presenting his own biases and opinions with regards to the people he's writing about (in what I presume is an effort to sensationalize his writing, as opposed to presenting a "dry" history), rather than checking them to the best of his ability.

Having said that, in a more informal context (and with the added caveat that his research into 4E is still preliminary, something he highlighted multiple times in this seminar) he's a lot of fun to listen to, and the underlying data points are still very interesting on their own. To that end, what follows is a basic overview of what Riggs' presented.

• According to a chart he put up, the AD&D 1st Edition Players Handbook sold 1.5 million copies. The AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook (including the revised version, which he says sold almost nothing) sold 1 million copies. The D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook sold just shy of 370,000 copies, while the 3.5 PHB sold a little over 300,000 copies.
• Here, Riggs stressed that the 3.0 and 3.5 numbers were particularly unreliable, because they only covered January of 2001 through December of 2006. That left off not only the initial sales of 3.0 (which was released in the summer of 2000, and here Riggs noted that Ryan Dancey had told him that if that time period was included, it would have almost doubled the sales numbers for the 3.0 PHB) but also any lingering sales of the 3.5 PHB.
• So why were the numbers for 3.X so much lower than even 2E? According to him, the Hasbro execs were of the opinion that it was because World of Warcraft (which released in late 2004) was eating their lunch. They saw an explosive phenomenon, according to the people Riggs interviewed, that was essentially the same as D&D except in a computerized form, and wanted to get that crowd back to the tabletop. So they handed down a directive to start work on a new edition that would draw the WoW crowd to them (which, Riggs noted, was a major mistake).
• According to his sources, the early versions of 4E were wildly different from not only what we eventually saw, but anything that had come before. Things like your damage dealt depending on if you rolled an odd number or an even one, etc. A lot of these were rolled back later on, but one thing that stayed popular from the get-go was the idea of implementing "cooldown" periods for powers. This eventually became the AED part of the AEDU suites of abilities.
• Stephen Radney-McFarland was cited as a strong opponent of 4E's WoW-centric development early on. He raised a lot of flags which were ignored, and the one that was most heavily noted was the fact that a magic missile could potentially miss an enemy. According to Riggs, Radney-McFarland pointed to that as something their core audience would rally around as being emblematic of the changes that they hated.
• He also noted that Radney-McFarland ran a playtest for Jason Bulmahn, who was aghast at having magic missiles that could miss. "That was the moment Pathfinder was born," noted Riggs.
• Riggs also cited Gleemax as being a terrible idea that never lived up to its implementation (he also said that the infamous murder-suicide that happened on the Gleemax team had nothing to do with that). One of its biggest failings, according to him, was that it allowed players to pay for a single month's subscription, go in and download all of the 4E material that WotC had published to date, and then cancel their account, giving them legal ways to use 4E for just a small surcharge without ever buying a book.
• At that point, Riggs noted that the 4E PHB sold far less than the 3E PHBs.
• Riggs also spent a lot of time talking about how there was (and still is) a lot of internal politics that goes on with regard to WotC. He cites the company as having no single authority (where D&D is concerned), and that there are factions within the company that are engaged in power struggles to get their respective visions implemented (according to one of his sources, the word "Machiavellian" was used). The pro-OGL and anti-OGL factions are just two of them, and he compared and contrasted the disastrous 4E GSL to what happened this January with the OGL 1.1 fiasco.
• Another example that he uncovered with regard to internal politics was that, right before the 4E Monster Manual went to the printer, someone on the management team (he didn't say who) looked at the book, decided that the monsters' hit points were too low, and raised them all. There was no oversight, no review, no playtesting (in fact, the lack of any sort of organized playtesting for 4E among their fan-base was another point that was brought up), and the result was that a lot of fights against monsters early in 4E's life felt like a slog.

One final note of interest: Riggs mentioned that he couldn't get anyone to talk to him about what's going on with One D&D, but that it seems emblematic of WotC still having a culture of warring factions. His big example there was how Mike Mearls, who wrote the 5E PHB (which according to Riggs' estimate has sold at least 3 million copies, if not more), is currently working on Magic: the Gathering instead of D&D. John Tynes, who wrote three of the top six best RPGs according to RPG.net, is also currently working on M:tG and not role-playing games. "Something," Riggs noted, "is rotten at Wizards of the Coast."

Time will tell if he's right.

Reading that It sounds like Hasbro doesn't understand DND and they think if they can just perfect WOW on paper they can hit 100 million sales or more. That strategy will end badly. Such a strange strategy for a company with a library of popular games that have not changed since invention that still make them millions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

On this. One of the issues with discussing this particular topic is that people are emotionally invested in this.

For example, for people that truly love 4e, you will often hear the following two contradictory things:
A. 5e is terrible, because they discarded all the good things about 4e.
B. 5e just reused the 4e system, so if you like 5e, you really like 4e.

On the other hand, if someone didn't like 4e, they are often going to resort to language to describe a feeling it engendered in them; more often than not, because they lack the terminology to describe the feeling in very critical manner (and because they bounced off of it and will be talking to someone with a system mastery of 4e), this conversation will go nowhere.

This isn't uncommon. Think about keyboards that you might type on. You might have strong preferences for the keyboard- the key travel. The clickety clack that it provides. The spacing between individual keys. These preferences will be different between different people, but unless you are intimately familiar with these ideas, more often than not you will often resort to saying, "I just don't like that particular keyboard." But at least with keyboards these concepts have been studied and, for the most part, engineered.

A lot of creative fields don't have that same amount of thought behind them, and while there is a lot of critical analysis, there remains a maddeningly subjective component. One person's camp classic is another person's terrible film. Or, to bring it to the topic at hand, some people have a different level when it comes to suspension of disbelief. Why aren't the police responding to that shooting? Why do you hear the "pew pew pew" in space? Why is opening statement and closing argument in that three-week trial both less than three minutes? Etc. In other words, what works for some people, doesn't work for others.

Moving to the AEDU example, it's pretty simple. Let's concentrate on the "E". The issue a lot of D&D players had with the "E" (refresher- "E"ncounter) power system is that while it solved a problem that D&D has always had (the issue of "going nova" in combats) by making giving powers different cooldown periods (at will, per encounter, and daily) it make explicit and unavoidable that this was no longer interested in verisimilitude. For the first time, the game provided resources that would be regained not through the passage of time, but due to the needs of the fiction.

Now, there are many people that might say, "FINALLY!" But that isn't the same as a short rest. Which is, again, time-based. In addition, the different classes aren't balanced around a At Will/Short Rest/Long Rest/ system. For a lot of people, this is one of many example where the game, regardless of the good design, went too far and "felt wrong."

Is it that much weirder than, say, an ability that you can use "more times per day as you increase in level" (proficiency times per day)? I can't tell you. I can tell you that for a lot of people, it feels different.

It's similar to the many issues with hit points. There are people that grudgingly agree with the abstract nature of hit points. But if you make it too "in their face," (damage on a miss, or the proverbial high level character who just jumps from their house down a chasm to go to work because they have the hit points for it), they revolt. Because everyone has a different tolerance level, and one person's "great design" is another person's "too far."

That was definitely a big part of my issue. The game blatantly went away from verisimilitude, and simulation in general, in its philosophy, so I felt it was actively moving away from my preferences.

 

[nevin]

I don't think it's that strange, TBH.

One of the strengths of D&D is that you can play it with a table that has a lot of ... shall we say ... varying abilities and interests. I have, quite literally, ran games with groups, and had a player say out loud to the table weeks after we started, "Um, what is this 'second wind' on my character sheet?"

While there are certainly players that will get frustrated with other players that don't have the same depth of knowledge, it is also true that when you need to wrangle together a group to play, D&D (especially versions like 5e) is relatively forgiving in terms of disparate levels of knowledge and enthusiasm.

while it's not my favorite edition it does share with 1e the fact that the level of knowledge needed to roll a character and play is Low compared to all other editions. Probably the reason both versions were the two best sellers. I didn't see 5e numbers but I remember in 2017 3 years after launch it was already at 700,000 really close to braking 1e's million dollar number after only 3 years i think.

 

[Mannahnin]

Moving to the AEDU example, it's pretty simple. Let's concentrate on the "E". The issue a lot of D&D players had with the "E" (refresher- "E"ncounter) power system is that while it solved a problem that D&D has always had (the issue of "going nova" in combats) by making giving powers different cooldown periods (at will, per encounter, and daily) it make explicit and unavoidable that this was no longer interested in verisimilitude. For the first time, the game provided resources that would be regained not through the passage of time, but due to the needs of the fiction.

Now, there are many people that might say, "FINALLY!" But that isn't the same as a short rest. Which is, again, time-based.

It's a different name than a short rest, but it literally is the same thing as a short rest. It is the rest and passage of time which refreshes them. An Encounter power in 4E resets after a short rest of five minutes. And you can spend Healing Surges (the less-random predecessor to 5E Hit Dice) during a short rest. If multiple encounters come closer together than that and you never get a rest, your Encounter powers don't reset.

It's purely the name.

In addition, the different classes aren't balanced around a At Will/Short Rest/Long Rest/ system. For a lot of people, this is one of many example where the game, regardless of the good design, went too far and "felt wrong."

They're not? Which edition are you talking about? You don't think the 4E classes were balanced around that system? IME this was one of the edition's greatest strengths.

5E doesn't do it as well, which is why they seem to be moving away from how they designed the 5E classes with some of them being more short rest focused and some more long rest focused.

For a lot of people, this is one of many example where the game, regardless of the good design, went too far and "felt wrong."

Is it that much weirder than, say, an ability that you can use "more times per day as you increase in level" (proficiency times per day)? I can't tell you. I can tell you that for a lot of people, it feels different.

It's similar to the many issues with hit points. There are people that grudgingly agree with the abstract nature of hit points. But if you make it too "in their face," (damage on a miss, or the proverbial high level character who just jumps from their house down a chasm to go to work because they have the hit points for it), they revolt. Because everyone has a different tolerance level, and one person's "great design" is another person's "too far."

This I agree with. From an aesthetic perspective, for a lot of people 4E went too far and slew too many sacred cows. They achieved things no other edition of D&D has managed as well (like caster/non-caster balance, and a truly functional CR and encounter design system), but at a high price in player buy-in.

Edit to add: the most frustrating thing I experienced with trying 4e was most of the players just spammed their basic attacks. They didn't care they had encounter/daily powers. It was odd.

I don't think it's that strange, TBH.

One of the strengths of D&D is that you can play it with a table that has a lot of ... shall we say ... varying abilities and interests. I have, quite literally, ran games with groups, and had a player say out loud to the table weeks after we started, "Um, what is this 'second wind' on my character sheet?"

While there are certainly players that will get frustrated with other players that don't have the same depth of knowledge, it is also true that when you need to wrangle together a group to play, D&D (especially versions like 5e) is relatively forgiving in terms of disparate levels of knowledge and enthusiasm.

Agreed. Some players just REALLY want the simple option. Essentials was a great fit for that type.

It was a long way from "most" players in my groups, though. A small percentage for us. Even the couple of brand-new-to-D&D guys I played with loved their E and D special powerful moves.

 

[nevin]

I think the canary in the coal mine is that we keep hearing World of Warcraft in all these discussions. This game will never bring in that kind of money. It will probably never bring in MoTG type of money. If that's the bar Dnd is doomed to continual cycle of reboot , reboot, reboot till the execs figure that out.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

if 1e sold one million copies it was between 1972 and 1989, (17 years)

A small point of clarification. 1e only fully existed from 1979-1989 (it was OD&D, or 0e before that).

The sales numbers for the PHB from Riggs are for 1979-1990. The vast majority of those sales occured in 1980, 1981 (biggest year), 1982, and 1983. (He doesn't have the date from 1978, I think).

In 1985, sales were just about 100,000, and continue falling. Basically, you can see the "Egbert explosion" (post 1979) and the 1984 crash in one glorious graph.

Source.

Basically, the "boom" ('80-'83) was responsible for over a million PHBs. The rest of the documented years ('79, '84-'90) was just shy of half a million.

 

[Mannahnin]

if 1e sold one million copies it was between 1972 and 1989, (17 years) 2e sold from 1989 to 2000, (11 years) third edition sold from 2000 to 2008 ( 8 years), 4th edition got 6. now we are at 7 for 5e and they are squeezing the cash cow again. The problem with these metrics is he completely left out context. 2nd edition bombed because TSR made bad decisions and was going bankrupt, third edition did exactly what pathfinder 1e and 2e did and split off the playerbase for a "new game" , 4th tried to replicate pathfinder and failed utterly.

The 1E PH was released in 1978, and the DMG (with the actual combat rules and saving throws; essential parts of the system) in 1979. The whole system was available for 10 years.

Original D&D (abbreviated OD&D or 0E) preceded it, starting in Feb 1974.

2nd edition didn't "bomb" in the sense of not selling at all. It sold, but less than 1E in part because a lot of players decided to just stick with 1E. And in part, as Snarf pointed out, because the big fad years for D&D were late '79 through 1983. 1E sales dropped off a cliff after the boom, and 2E sales were ok, but never matched the peak of when D&D was a fad.

2E's later books sold worse and worse it appears because they were cannibalizing their own sales, with a multiplicity of settings dividing the purchaser base. Ben Riggs has given us this data in his book and online. But the core books sold decently, which is what we're talking about here. Just not as well as other editions.

5E came out in 2014, right? So we're at nine years, not seven.

 

[Velderan]

I played Warcraft for an afternoon at a friend's house but I have never played WoW.

I can't imagine that the WoW cool downs are like the AEDU system. Are any of the cool down periods slow enough that it is once per fight only? Once per day so not even once per fight?

I can imagine that the monster recharge system (roll a d6 each round and on a X-6 it recharges) is similar, but AEDU seems an odd connection. D&D had always had at will attacks and daily spells. So magical at wills, and encounter and daily powers for everyone, are the real 4e changes, with encounter powers being the biggest change.

Can anyone familiar with WoW tell me how their cool down periods worked? Was it based on a group mana pool so no magic at all for a bit depending on the strength of the power used? Was it a separate cool down pool for each power so you could use all of your "encounter" cool down powers each fight? Were there options of at will powers to do in between cool downs?

In the vanilla version of WoW, cooldowns largely fell into 3 groups; short, medium, and long.

Short cooldowns were mostly in the 4-10 second range so they could be used multiple times on an instance boss encounter. Medium cooldowns were in the 1-5 minute range typically, so you could use them once per instance boss encounter and by the time you cleared the trash monsters between boss encounters, they'd be back up again for use.

Then you have the long cooldowns. For a warrior, this included stuff like Shield Wall (reduced damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds) and Recklessness (increased crit rate and made you immune to fear for 15 seconds). They had a 30 minute cooldown so you wouldn't be able to use them on every boss encounter and they also shared a cooldown, so you had to pick which one you wanted to use (though usually that was kinda chosen for you based on what specialization you were).

Translating that concept to a TTRPG would be abilities you could use a couple times per encounter, abilities you could use once per encounter, and abilities you could use once a day (assuming you're building your game around X number of encounters per day).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's a different name than a short rest, but it literally is the same thing as a short rest. It is the rest and passage of time which refreshes them. An Encounter power in 4E resets after a short rest of five minutes.

Not to be pedantic, but that's an encounter-based ability. We all play 5e. Short rests, whether you love them or hate them, is not five minutes.

It's required uninterrupted downtime of at least an hour.

In 4e, short rests are what defines the border between different encounters. That's in the name. In 5e, a short rest is an affirmative action that must be taken.

So I don't agree with you. It is not literally (or even figuratively) the same thing as a short rest. Conceptually or actually.