D&D (2024) Dungeons and Dragons future? Ray Winninger gives a nod to Mike Shea's proposed changes.

[Charlaquin]

"Dry," "jargon," "technical," "dull," "like a video game" (that last one I take to be a criticism of the readability when the critic lacks the vocabulary to ger across their frustration wirh the formatting) are all terms I've seen to describe the readability 4E products on numerous occasions. WotC have continued to tout their use of natural language when making 5E, which is tied to the readability of the game.

Note the difference between "legible" or "organized" and "readable." Readabikity is about enjoyment and the aesthetic sense of interacting with a text, not the understanding of information.

The primary definition of readability is “the quality of being legible or decipherable.”

Whether or not 4e was enjoyable to read is a matter of taste. It was most definitely more legible and decipherable than 5e is.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The primary definition of readability is “the quality of being legible or decipherable.”

Even given that extremely reductionist definition, 4e failed 50% of those criteria.

 

[Charlaquin]

Even given that extremely reductionist definition, 4e failed 50% of those criteria.

It did far better than 5e in both regards!

 

[Hussar]

Readability is subjective though. I found 4e more readable than 2e or 3e. That was one of the things that brought me back to D&D.

Heh. I opened up my old 3e books the other day looking for something or other. HOLY CRAP are those books not easy to read. Tiny, tiny writing, massive paragraphs and black text on colored backgrounds? Gack! That's pretty much an entire lesson on how not to write a rule book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Heh. I opened up my old 3e books the other day looking for something or other. HOLY CRAP are those books not easy to read. Tiny, tiny writing, massive paragraphs and black text on colored backgrounds? Gack! That's pretty much an entire lesson on how not to write a rule book.

I only have my 3e FR sourcebook available for comparison, but the font size seems to be about the same as 5e (which I would also rate as too small). However, they use a fancier, and therefore less legible font, and there is lower contrast between the background colour and the text. These days, I read the digital versions though. Makes my life a lot easier.

 

[Hussar]

Even given that extremely reductionist definition, 4e failed 50% of those criteria.

No, I gotta disagree with you on this one. You might not like the rules, that's a separate issue, but, one could never claim that the rules in 4e are less clear than the rules in 5e. Never minding that the 4e books are really, really easy to read - I mean physically easier to read - large texts, clearly marked break points, extremely logically organized, that sort of thing.

For a perfect example, one only needs to compare the stealth rules between 4e and 5e. The stealth rules in 4e are perfectly clear, easy to use and, above all, entirely contained on a single page. The stealth rules in 5e are many things but they are not perfectly clear (as evidenced by years of complaints about them), and they are most definitely not contained on a single page.

Now, again, clear to understand and easy to read does not make things better than other things as far as rules go. Obviously 5e went with different design priorities, and the 4e Stealth rules would stand out like a sore thumb in 5e. They wouldn't work very well and would very much not fit with the overall design of 5e. But, from a narrow criteria of which one is easier to read, easier to use in the game and will cause less headaches, 4e wins hands down.

Again, however, those criteria are not the baseline design criteria in 5e. 5e went with passing things over to the DM so that individual tables will evolve their own stealth rules idiosyncratic to that table which generally results in happier tables or at least, far less pissing and moaning from certain quarters that WotC is "forcing" things on them. It's all down to interpretation.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

4e had the best lore about Cave Bears...

DC 15 Nature Check: Cave Bears live in Caves

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No, I gotta disagree with you on this one. You might not like the rules, that's a separate issue, but, one could never claim that the rules in 4e are less clear than the rules in 5e.

That's kind of the point: precise language isn't the same as readable language. Scientific papers use very precise language, but they are a devil to read, and even harder to comprehend.

You might not like the rules

I didn't say that. Some of them, once someone has explained them to me in natural language, seem great. But when I tried to read the 4e book, I didn't understand the rules.

 

[Aldarc]

"Readability" means the enjoyability of reading something, not legibility. 4E material is legible, if technical and dry. Admittedly thisnis somewhat to taste, but there are common trends.

4E books don't have to be usable outside of 4E, but given the broader context of literally every other Edition having some level of transparency and continued utiliry through such natural language readabiliry, dry technical jargon of 4E material stands out.

Honestly, I wouldn't mention it except that people keep saying "hey, remember how books in 4E were chores to read? Why doesn't WotC do that anynore???"

This is false. "Readability" does NOT typically mean or refer to the enjoyment of reading something. In general parlance (or "natural language," if you will), "readability" refers to the ease of understanding written material, whether that is due to presentation, layout, diction and vocabulary, or phrasing and grammar, etc. The enjoyment that comes from the process of reading said material is different.

Readability = Ease of Understanding =! Enjoyment of Reading

If you personally didn't find 4e enjoyable to read, then that's fine, but that's not an issue of readability.

Note the difference between "legible" or "organized" and "readable." Readabikity is about enjoyment and the aesthetic sense of interacting with a text, not the understanding of information.

Note that "readability" doesn't mean what you think it does, which is important since your argument hinges on this point.

We don’t know that. 4e didn’t grow as quickly as WotC needed it to, but we have no evidence that the writing was at fault for that. Indeed, what we do know is that 4e was incredibly popular with new players, but the loss of old players created a bottleneck to entry. What this suggests is that the biggest problem was that their early marketing decisions made long-time players feel snubbed.

EDIT: I also don’t think “dry” is a fair characterization of 4e’s presentation. 4e was full of flavor, it was just more technical than previous editions had been.

Funny thing about cooking writing. What’s the number one complaint about cooking blogs? That you have to wade through paragraphs of crap just to get to the recipe at the bottom.

But this little back and forth about 4e is precisely why 5e was laid out the way it was. There was zero chance WotC could use any layout ideas from 4e. Just not going to happen.

So here we are eight years later and people complain about vague writing, poor organization and poor layout and wonder why it was done this way.

It’s not exactly a secret. Anything with 4e cooties was an absolute nope in 2014. In 2024, it’s only okay if you can sneak it in under the radar.

Robert Schwalb is working on his more generic fantasy roleplaying game based on his Shadow of the Demon Lord game. When working on the write-ups for spells and other entries, he asked playtesters for feedback on two different formats. One version looked more like 3e/5e with spell effects and such buried in flavor text. The other version was like 4e. Most playtesters reported preferring the latter more 4e-like version, though they didn't recognize it as such. Schwalb admitted that he feared presenting it the latter way due to people's visceral reactions to anything remotely 4e like. However, this 4e style formatting is what the playtesters wanted because it was hands down far easier to parse.

 

[delericho]

Which books? Can you use Sword and Fist at the same table as the 3.5 PHB?

Yes. The extent to which those two versions are incompatible is widely overstated, often for effect.

That said, using "Sword & Fist" with the 3.5e PHB won't work well. That's not because of incompatibility - using "Sword & Fist" with the 3.0e PHB won't work well either. "Sword & Fist" is just a pretty terrible book.