D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Marc_C]

Myself and several others on here (and elsewhere) spent a huge amount of time during that era trying to convince/teach people to (a) view 4e through an indie design lens (thereby undoing some of the really bad marketing ploys/gaffes of 4e - eg "ze game remains ze same" - no it doesn't - and "skip the gate guards and get to the fun"...how about the less incendiary "cut to the action" or Dogs less flammable "at every moment, drive play toward conflict" instead?) and (b) embrace the GMing Techniques and Principles and Player Best Practices that undergird such play.

But the collective cacophony and resolve by a select group of edition warriors to wage a scorched earth campaign on the game (and WotC at that moment in time) was just_far_too much.

It's a fallacy that 4e failed because players didn't give it a real chance. That somehow a few people on forums could prevent people trying it in their homes. The cold hard truth is that many of those who gave it a fair chance (like me for 12 months) and tried it for more than a few hours didn't like it enough to keep playing it. It's best to accept that and move on, than dream up alternate history scenarios in which 4e was a resounding success.

 

[Manbearcat]

IMHO, the problem is that the more one tries turning it into any hybrid of Blades in the Dark, Strike!, or some sort of non-d20 man-bear-cat hybrid, the less that it becomes like 4e. I think that showcasing what 4e could be should be less about trying to make a magic dream system cobbled with favorite other systems and more about trying to cut and polish 4e into a precious gem that lets 4e shine.

Yeah, I don't disagree with this. I wasn't implying a cobbling of those systems. I was trying to convey that the answers to the perceived "warts" that 4e possesses are in various aspects of design in those systems. You can still make a game fully 4e and (for instance) use Clock tech instead of 4e Skill Challange framework (and integrate all Powers with that tech) and have the general action resolution framework of Strike (which is basically Blades to be honest). Integrating those two changes and then sharpening up the xp triggers and shortening/clarifying the feedback loops of those reward cycles isn't particularly invasive design-work. And it makes for a game that is still clearly 4e through-and-through.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But if the complaint is "nobody wants to have anchovy pizza with me, a we ever get is pepperoni" (actual problem I have, life is hard), it doesn't mean that pepperoni is a problem for the pizza industry.

No, it means anchovies are disgusting and whoever thought it was a good idea to put them on a pizza was an idiot.

 

[Parmandur]

No, it means anchovies are disgusting and whoever thought it was a good idea to put them on a pizza was an idiot.

But what you fail to understand is that if more people tried anchovy pizza, they'd see how backwards and stuck in the past pepperoni Pizza really is!

(I do like anchovy pizza, and quirky indy games can rock on, just making a point about the thread topic).

 

[pemerton]

I am involved in several TTRPG playtests. I don't know if it's against the NDA to discuss it, so I won't mention the game or creator. But they were asking about the formatting of spells and presented two options: (1) one with a block of natural language and (2) a second with tight, cleaned-up text. The playtesters OVERWHELMINGLY (+95%) preferred option 2, and the designer flat out explicitly said that they were worried because of the negative reaction people had to this sort of formatting in 4e.

The negative reaction to 4e formatting is a real thing, but it absolutely baffles me. As I've often posted, I love immersion in the fiction and inhabitation of the character - but the rules text is not part of this. It's a means for establishing the fiction, not the fiction per se, and the crisper the better.

I can only imagine that those who rely on the rules text to be part of their understanding of the fiction are approaching RPGing with a very different mindset from my own.

 

[Fanaelialae]

No, it means anchovies are disgusting and whoever thought it was a good idea to put them on a pizza was an idiot.

Nah man, it just means you don't like anchovies. I don't really care for them either, but I've got no issues with them as long as I don't have to eat them.

I used to think that Hawaiian pizza was (conceptually) disgusting. Then I actually gave it a shot and found it was surprisingly good. Not my favorite, but not something I'd say no to either.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Nah man, it just means you don't like anchovies

No one likes anchovies. Not even other anchovies like anchovies.

 

[Fanaelialae]

No one likes anchovies. Not even other anchovies like anchovies.

One of my friends loves anchovies. Whether straight from a can or on pizza.

 

[pemerton]

I would LOVE to behold an alternative universe where (i) the game was released in, say, 2018, (particularly after the Blades in the Dark, PBtA love-fest) and (ii) the game was released without the utterly unhelpful stuff I listed above (no...the game is not the same and cut to the action and Skill Challenges should be informed by Fail Forward, Success w/ Complications, and every moment of action resolution should dynamically Change the Situation). Edition Warriors would still besiege places with a frantic, pearl-clutching, obfuscating hatred...but now there is so much more widespread understanding of, and love for, indie games and the type of design and play that 4e represented.

Would be interesting.

I think that showcasing what 4e could be should be less about trying to make a magic dream system cobbled with favorite other systems and more about trying to cut and polish 4e into a precious gem that lets 4e shine.

4e would still definitely need several more passes of playtests, not just to work out the math, but also arguably to cut down on some of the leftover 3e era approach to game design (e.g., bucket o' FEATS!) or even slim the level spread down from 30 levels.

There is some truth to what Aldarc says, but I see those as mostly technical issues, and not ultimately fundamental to 4e's design. (The closest points of crossover between "technical" and "fundamental", in my view, are (i) the fact that combat and non-combat numbers are different, and (ii) the fact that AC breaks down for so many classes that hacks like those for many primal classes, dragon sorcerers etc become utterly ubiquitous.)

But the real reason Manbearcat's alternative universe is impossible is because the understanding in today's world of the techniques and approach the underpin 4e is (in part) a result of 4e's presence in the RPGing ecosystem.

 

[Manbearcat]

It's a fallacy that 4e failed because players didn't give it a real chance. That somehow a few people on forums could prevent people trying it in their homes. The cold hard truth is that many of those who gave it a fair chance (like me for 12 months) and tried it for more than a few hours didn't like it enough to keep playing it. It's best to accept that and move on, than dream up alternate history scenarios in which 4e was a resounding success.

The bold is not what is happening in that exchange. Its an expression of a curiosity, really.

I'm not sure why you felt inclined to post this. I don't know you. I don't know your anecdote. What I'm speaking at is "at the population level" (eg not Mark_C or Mark_C's table) there was a particular brand of revolutionary that was undergirded by a deep misunderstanding and/or misrepresentation of the game...and a willfull perpetuation of this...in public at game shops/hobby shops/movie theatres...book-burning on social media...on forums...with a level of irrational hostility and aggression and long-term commitment that is deranged when you consider we're talking about "a game"...over the course of 4+ years.

I mean, the type of person to do that...that is a sort of pathological behavior that needs an intervention.

If you weren't one of those people...awesome. But why you would assert that those people didn't exist and they weren't prolific? If you were there...you had to have experienced it (even if you weren't "the opposition" let's say). This is just a very odd post from you. I don't know what would inspire you to respond like this (or to this).