D&D 4E Is there a "Cliffs Notes" summary of the entire 4E experience?

[Lord Mhoram]

No, it's a perfectly fair point. One of the positives of the whole 4e experience, at least here in the online communities, is that there's a much greater recognition that two people's desires for an RPG can be diametrically opposed, despite the fact that both them play D&D. 4e really opened up communication about concepts like play agendas. The online conversation certainly made me a better RPGer, as it exposed me to types of games I wouldn't have tried previously, and made me aware of narrative type games, which I now enjoy over more traditional RPGs.

I saw it really going to town post Forge. I know some serious playstyle conversations on RPGnet really helped me focus on what I liked and what I didn't. I was the RPG manager of a game/comic store - and separation personal taste from objectively good was a requirement for that.

Saves me money looking at games and getting the playstyle intent for styles I don't like, so I don't have to buy them.

 

[TerraDave]

They basically scrapped the system 10 months in to a 24 month development cycle and still hit the deadline on the nail. A few months later Rich Baker and Mike Meals came up with AEDU rather than each class having a separate Bo9S style recharge mechanic (and there not being strategic play) - the Bo9S was made up of all the good parts of Orcus.

I like the inside baseball as much as the next guy. But I think we have to be careful about this. For example, I am not--at all--getting your summary above from the link you actually posted.

Heinso was the lead, at least some of the time. Andy collins is there, overseeing the whole thing and seeing it as lead developer. Not Mearls. Mearls was not a lead. And they did this all together, trying to pick one over the other is a little futile. There is no indication, at all, the Heinso wanted some other approach in the final game.

If you look at that though, you do see something else. I can repeat it: they did not have enough time for development and playtesting given the scale of the change. (This is also confirmed simply by following a lot of the early previews. Like, remember with race was going to be really important across the first 10 levels, or the whole wizard implement thing...)

You can infer something else, which may be more interesting. They went in looking for big changes. 3E was a great success, but they went in looking to do something very different, and then had to figure a way to get back closer to "D&D"

 

[Neonchameleon]

I like the inside baseball as much as the next guy. But I think we have to be careful about this. For example, I am not--at all--getting your summary above from the link you actually posted.

Heinso was the lead, at least some of the time. Andy collins is there, overseeing the whole thing and seeing it as lead developer. Not Mearls. Mearls was not a lead. And they did this all together, trying to pick one over the other is a little futile. There is no indication, at all, the Heinso wanted some other approach in the final game.

And I'm very sceptical about those conclusions you drew too. Mearls wasn't the lead. But Heinsoo in one of the interviews explicitly credits Mearls and Richard Baker with coming up with AEDU, fixing what was until that point one of the core problems with 4E as then was (no resource management). This doesn't mean it was something Heinsoo thought was a bad idea. I wasn't intending to pitch it as a faction fight.

As for scrapping Orcus, yes I believe they did from my reading of the links including the Heinsoo interview.

If you look at that though, you do see something else. I can repeat it: they did not have enough time for development and playtesting given the scale of the change. (This is also confirmed simply by following a lot of the early previews. Like, remember with race was going to be really important across the first 10 levels, or the whole wizard implement thing...)

You can infer something else, which may be more interesting. They went in looking for big changes. 3E was a great success, but they went in looking to do something very different, and then had to figure a way to get back closer to "D&D"

Both those are true

 

[Remathilis]

They basically scrapped the system 10 months in to a 24 month development cycle and still hit the deadline on the nail. A few months later Rich Baker and Mike Meals came up with AEDU rather than each class having a separate Bo9S style recharge mechanic (and there not being strategic play) - the Bo9S was made up of all the good parts of Orcus.

It explains a lot: I recall a lot of people during the end of 3e (before 4e was announced) to look to Saga and Bo9S as test-pilots for a 4e and was really amazed when 4e looked so very little like either of them.

I personally felt this also very much applied to 4e monsters. The early monsters were knocked for just being stat-blocks, but what stat blocks! To me those stat blocks told a story about that monster. Get too close to a swarm of insects? Suffer damage from their tiny biting attacks! Fighting a giant? Wait until he picks up one of the PCs and throws them at another one! Going toe-to-toe with a dragon? Tail slap! Zombie? Crit them with a 'head shot' and they are insta-dead.

Going to disagree with you on this one.

I remember cracking open the MM and stumbling over a monster called a swordwing. It was mid-paragon, insect like with a scythe-blade arm, lived in spires underground, and collected things. And that's it.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20080502b

My first reaction upon seeing them is: Why?

Why do they collect? Impulsive need? Draconic influence? Mating purposes? If they are 25th level and live in colonies, why don't they raid whole villages for their collections. Why do they have a scythe blade: hunting, protection, "a wizard did it"? And the stat block gives no clue, unless "extra 2d6 on Opportunity attacks" oozes flavor.

I recall googling to find if there was a older version of the monster out there to fill in the gaps because the scant info given wasn't enough to inspire me. They'd be a random monster in a dungeon, there to kill or be killed.

I was lucky: I looked at D&D staples and recalled how to use raksashas, hobgoblins, or wights. I couldn't imagine that being someone's first Monster Manual and knowing what to do with it other than "here is a monster, kill it."

 

[Dungeoneer]

Going to disagree with you on this one.

I remember cracking open the MM and stumbling over a monster called a swordwing. It was mid-paragon, insect like with a scythe-blade arm, lived in spires underground, and collected things. And that's it.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20080502b

My first reaction upon seeing them is: Why?

Why do they collect? Impulsive need? Draconic influence? Mating purposes? If they are 25th level and live in colonies, why don't they raid whole villages for their collections. Why do they have a scythe blade: hunting, protection, "a wizard did it"? And the stat block gives no clue, unless "extra 2d6 on Opportunity attacks" oozes flavor.

I recall googling to find if there was a older version of the monster out there to fill in the gaps because the scant info given wasn't enough to inspire me. They'd be a random monster in a dungeon, there to kill or be killed.

I was lucky: I looked at D&D staples and recalled how to use raksashas, hobgoblins, or wights. I couldn't imagine that being someone's first Monster Manual and knowing what to do with it other than "here is a monster, kill it."

You aren't disagreeing with what I wrote, or at least you haven't yet. I did not assert that stat blocks gave any information about monster ecology or origins. I'm saying that the mechanics of the stat block gave a good job conveying the 'feel' of that monster in combat. And believe it or not, this actually is pretty important, at least to the players.

 

[jadrax]

It explains a lot: I recall a lot of people during the end of 3e (before 4e was announced) to look to Saga and Bo9S as test-pilots for a 4e and was really amazed when 4e looked so very little like either of them.

Yeah, I actually remember a lot of people basically cheer-leading for 4e pre-release as basically fantasy Saga and feeling pretty burnt when they got the actual game.

 

[Balesir]

Going to disagree with you on this one.

I remember cracking open the MM and stumbling over a monster called a swordwing. It was mid-paragon, insect like with a scythe-blade arm, lived in spires underground, and collected things. And that's it.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20080502b

I think this comes down to personal taste and how you read/see things. I just read the linked excerpt, and got far more than you did. The swordwing (which is mid-Epic, not mid-Paragon, by the way) is aberrant, insectoid and acts like a defender in combat, collects bizarre things (including trophies) and lives in spires it chews from rock. I immediately get the vibe of an alien-minded control freak with obscure motivations, and the dangerous arms it presumably uses to build and fight.

My first reaction upon seeing them is: Why?

Why do they collect? Impulsive need? Draconic influence? Mating purposes? If they are 25th level and live in colonies, why don't they raid whole villages for their collections. Why do they have a scythe blade: hunting, protection, "a wizard did it"? And the stat block gives no clue, unless "extra 2d6 on Opportunity attacks" oozes flavor.

Any of the above will work fine, but should in my view be campaign specific. Maybe they do raid whole villages, but the fact that each has his or her own specific thing to collect tells me that they probably don't work well together except for hunting and defence. The "extra 2d6 on Opportunity attacks" tells me that they have hair trigger reflexes and quite possibly hunt by flushing out prey (then snagging them as they try to flee).

As an aside, this is a thread I see in many aspects; perhaps an angle on "process-sim" versus "outcome resolution". I want game rules that tell me what things do, not how they do it. For a Charm spell, I want to know what the spell does in terms of an outcome, not "it makes the target view you as a friend" - which tells me how it does what it does, but not what it does.

 

[Ratskinner]

Shout out to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], since I'm going to pick this up here. I took some time to reread sections of my PHB1 and DMG1. Also, for any other readers out there, I'm not sure how much I'd count this problem as part of the "Cliff Notes" summary of the 4e experience, since I'm not sure how common a problem it was. Hopefully I won't take so much time composing this post that its passé by the time it hits.

I'd never seen those lead-up statements by Heinsoo so thank you very much for posting them pemerton. That is as insightful a glance into the mental framework for Heinsoo's D&D as you will find. That has been my exact surmise all these years. They intentionally embedded driftability/wobbliness because D&D has to be more general. Nonetheless, the indie influence in design and GMing principles are there (and I know we've been through this several times @Ratskinner so I apoligize for redredging...but hey, why not ):

Meh. That's what forums are for innit? Although let's stick a pin in driftability for a minute.

I know that you feel that the premise and the supporting evidence isn't there. Same for @Nagol . I don't know. Maybe its because you guys are comparing it to Fate and its Fate Point Economy (or MHRP/Savage Worlds plot/bennie economies). Those economies and system interactions aren't specifically there but perhaps poor man derivatives in another fashion (but there is a healing surge economy that manifests in certain ways - spend a healing surge for a success in an SC or for Rituals/MPs - this could have been central but they didn't go that route). Those economies are certainly major parts of some games whose function is to propel narrative. However, those aren't the only devices out there for it. Several (the majority) "Story Now" indie games don't possess them (or at least not in the same form).

Having just reread the relevant DMG sections....I think its just that its far to subtle, even timid about it. In fact, most of its in little sidebars or tiny paragraphs that seem like afterthoughts to large tracts that seem like very 3e-ish notes about numbers, etc. Even the SC/HS notes seems to fall more along the lines of "Sim" rather than "Story Now", with examples focusing on exhaustion from travel or similar. I don't see anything about spending a Healing Surge for success intentionally. If Healing Surges are intended to be an "economy" for Story Now purposes rather than a sim-ish reflection of Character Condition, I see no evidence of it in the text of the DMG1.

Also, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], recall that I wasn't following the website/updates very much. I was pretty casual about the advent of 4e. (Having heard it was like some combo of Bo9S and SWSE, both of which I liked, I didn't figure it would actually be a big deal.) I would never have seen those talks and the like. I don't think that following development blogs and the like should be necessary to understand how a game should be run. (My group was also one of those that experienced the disaster of the first-run skill challenge math, so I'm sure that didn't help.) Of course, if they intended it to be so driftable, maybe there wasn't a way it "should be" run.

Perhaps as a consequence of wanting to make it "driftable", they toned it down too much. I wasn't looking for an "indie" game out of D&D (having been profoundly disappointed before), and nothing in the reading of the rules in the first set of books dissuaded me that this wasn't a slightly fancier, more-codified 3e-ish system. (Although things like DC treadmills impressed me as stupid right out of the gate, I saw them as a legacy issue.) That is, yes, I can see now how it can be run that way, but I still don't get the impression that that was the intention from the writing of DMG1. (maybe James Wyatt was a WotC staffer that didn't get it?)

I do certainly recognize that "economies" are not the only way to do StoryNow, but honestly I don't get how most of those other points line up as "Indie". I mean, Healing Surges are no more "open descriptor" than HP before them. Quest XPs are certainly not intended to be the primary (sometimes only) source of advancement as are similar mechanics in other games. The scene based mechanics I'll give you, but that was pretty old hat by the 2008.

I wish that DMG2 (which was released inside a year of the system's release) would have been the initial DMG (with several other bits of fantastic advice in DMG1), but it wasn't. <snippage>

Indeed water under the bridge. I think it was some of the things you mentioned and intentional incoherency/system drift due to what Heinsoo outlines above. And I absolutely agree that several people under Heinsoo didn't know what they had. You look at the early adventures by Mearls et al and they are a cluster. They should have been presented as Dungeon World's Fronts. Instead you get this godawful dungeon delving format and this impossible formalizing of abstract conflict resolution. I would never try to formalize abstract conflict resolution but there are tons of people on this very board who have done a thousand times better job at it than those awful initial goes by the very folks who were supposed to have the best handle on things.

It seems to me that that's what these discussion always come down to, and I think its instructive and evidence for what I'm talking about. Other than you (and some other around here) "got it" when 4e first came out, and I failed my Secret Decoder Ring check, I actually don't think we disagree much about it.

 

[Nagol]

Shout out to [MENTION=42582]

<snip>

Also, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], recall that I wasn't following the website/updates very much. I was pretty casual about the advent of 4e. (Having heard it was like some combo of Bo9S and SWSE, both of which I liked, I didn't figure it would actually be a big deal.) I would never have seen those talks and the like. I don't think that following development blogs and the like should be necessary to understand how a game should be run. (My group was also one of those that experienced the disaster of the first-run skill challenge math, so I'm sure that didn't help.) Of course, if they intended it to be so driftable, maybe there wasn't a way it "should be" run

In fact, development blogs and preview books are aspirational -- they describe what the developers are intending at the time of publication. The actual rulebooks are definitional -- they define the game and expectations for playing it.

One cannot be expected to only understand how to run the game if one has gone through the preview material.

Perhaps as a consequence of wanting to make it "driftable", they toned it down too much. I wasn't looking for an "indie" game out of D&D (having been profoundly disappointed before), and nothing in the reading of the rules in the first set of books dissuaded me that this wasn't a slightly fancier, more-codified 3e-ish system. (Although things like DC treadmills impressed me as stupid right out of the gate, I saw them as a legacy issue.) That is, yes, I can see now how it can be run that way, but I still don't get the impression that that was the intention from the writing of DMG1. (maybe James Wyatt was a WotC staffer that didn't get it?)

Going back and skimming the first three books, I do not get the sense that the designers were presenting a story-now game. The example of skill challenge, for example, are pretty far from a story-now/fail-forward approach. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find any advice/direction/discussion on that style inside the rulebooks. Which is why I suspect the designers didn't intend to expect it to work that way as a game.

I do certainly recognize that "economies" are not the only way to do StoryNow, but honestly I don't get how most of those other points line up as "Indie". I mean, Healing Surges are no more "open descriptor" than HP before them. Quest XPs are certainly not intended to be the primary (sometimes only) source of advancement as are similar mechanics in other games. The scene based mechanics I'll give you, but that was pretty old hat by the 2008.



It seems to me that that's what these discussion always come down to, and I think its instructive and evidence for what I'm talking about. Other than you (and some other around here) "got it" when 4e first came out, and I failed my Secret Decoder Ring check, I actually don't think we disagree much about it.

 

[Remathilis]

Going back and skimming the first three books, I do not get the sense that the designers were presenting a story-now game. The example of skill challenge, for example, are pretty far from a story-now/fail-forward approach. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find any advice/direction/discussion on that style inside the rulebooks. Which is why I suspect the designers didn't intend to expect it to work that way as a game.

I get the idea that they were trying to do something D&D has always claimed to do: cater to a wide audience of fantasy and game enthusiasts.

Combat was built around tactical/co-op play, with movement and strategy that appealed to wargamers and skirmish-gamers.

Character design was built with an eye to MMO gamers with clear roles, powers that returned at various cool-downs, and an emphasis on "builds" and item-acquisition.

Role-playing and Non-combat advancement was clearly borrowing from Indie-gaming, but I don't think they were exactly going for "story first". I think that was a pleasant side-effect of the way powers, skills, and such interacted. It was order built from chaos, rather than the "grand design" which is why it seems absent in the early books but prominent in the middle ones.

Incidentally, I don't think it helped for D&D to chase all those player-bases: 4e suffered a bit of an identity crisis for it. At its height, Wizards was trying to sell me monthly books, an online subscription, minis packs, power-card packs, terrain tiles, and dice. It really created the look of a game that was a miniatures skirmish game with a card-game element and an online requirement. I'm sure the perception fueled MANY a hater's disdain.