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

[pemerton]

I can accept flat AC and hp, but not martial dailies or healing surges. Why? Who the blank cares?

Not me. Or rather, I care because it is relevant to having productive conversations with you about RPGing. But it's not relevant to whether or not you are worth talking to about RPGing, or whether or not you are RPGing rather than doing some other thing!

I find turn-by-turn intitiative (rather than continuous initiative) tolerable. (After all, I'm playing 4e, not RM.) But I find combat where hit-point ablation is at the heart of it very hard to take. (Hence, I'm playing 4e and not some earlier version of D&D).

These are all facts about me.

The very fact that I find 4e combat not to be simply hp ablation is also a fact about me - for others, the significance of position, and of effects, that for me is crucial to 4e combat (and distinguishes it from sheer hp ablation) completley passes them by.

These are more facts of basically biographical interest.

None of these facts - about me, about you - call out any category of mechanis that is distinctively "dissociated".

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Hi. I'm Nemesis Destiny. Some of you may remember me from such threads as Pemertonian Scene Framing and its continuation, as well as Nemesis Destiny's Houserules Thread. I have also participated in my share of 4dvocating for my edition of choice when I see it baselessly attacked as being unworthy of the D&D name, which is sadly oftener than it should be.

So, I am somewhat reluctant to join this discussion with all the predictable and tiresome anti-4e vitriol, but I think I may have something of value to offer the discussion, even if only anecdotal, in that I used to be a staunch h4ter but "came around" to the edition after it was released - something that was stated as unlikely in this thread. Perhaps I am an outlier, or perhaps not, I don't know, but I wanted to offer my take on things all the same, even though OP is likely long-unsubscribed from this trainwreck of a thread.

Fair warning - this will be long. Here goes.

I think I need to cover in brief my history with the game/brand. I started playing at or just after the zenith of the fad-phase, sometime in the mid eighties. I was introduced to the game from two places: the jock neghbours across the street (into the fad), and also my teacher in the gifted program at school (yeah, card-carrying nerd here). I couldn't get enough of the game, but unfortunately I was quite young and couldn't convince my parents to buy me books that were for kids nearly twice my age, so I was at the mercy of playing when the jocks across the road wanted to (which was not often enough), and soon enough they abandoned the fad for other things like atari, nintendo, bmx bikes, and chasing girls.

Fast-forward to 1989 and the release of 2e. I had just read The Hobbit in school, and thought I was still "too young" but by this time I have more control over my spending cash, so I plunked down for the PHB and a set of translucent blue polyhedrals. I was obsessed. I got a bunch of my friends into it, and we all started reading fantasy novels and playing D&D. This continued through elementary school, into high school, followed me when I moved to a different town, and on through the rest of high school and into college.

Fast forward to 1999. There had been many years of AD&D under my belt; some good, some not so good, but I still loved the idea of the game, even if the rules (and bad DMing, and annoying players, etc) were sometimes poor at realizing those outcomes. I identify strongly with all those who spoke of 4e delivering on the promise of earlier rulesets (more on that later). With a decade of 2e under my belt, including the Player's Option material (whose limits we had thoroughly pushed), I was ready for another change, so I was pretty stoked when 3e was announced. I followed everything I could find on the subject online (including a lot of lurking around these parts). We even took the "things you can do to prepare for 3e" to heart and pretty much liked everything we saw.

Then the game hit and I picked up my preorder. I still had new-game blinders on (and would for some time), but others were less than impressed. I still think of this every time someone claims that 3e was some kind of great unifier. It wasn't. Far from it. There were plenty of holdouts at my local unfriendly game shop. Something one gamer said stuck out in my mind as the clerk was trying to sell him on 3e; "I will buy this and start using it only if I think it's going to add something to my game." He walked out emptyhanded. I remember thinking to myself at the time, "what's wrong with this guy?" Now I know better. He had a point.

For me, the 3e era was one of intergroup strife, as one of my players (my then-girlfriend, now-wife) absolutely loathed 3e. Some of the changes, she liked, as I noted, but as a whole, for her, it was a bridge too far. I struggled to understand it, but even then I was still so enthralled with the new shiny that I could not fathom going back. I figured she was just being obstinate, but her hatred for all things 3e, and eventually 3.x, just festered and she grew to hate it more and more. I still didn't understand. 3.x was supposed to fix all this. I also failed to understand why the game was coming apart at the seams as my long-running campaign chugged, lurched, and grinded its way into brokenness (double-digit levels).

This was before I had really developed any understanding of game design, or the problems that 3e had. I had no concept of LFQW, 5MWD, SoD, SoS, broken CR rules, and all the other things that made that game unfun behind the screen. I figured that I must be doing something wrong, or that some of my players were being powergaming munchkins. I committed Stormwind and Oberoni Fallacies aplenty, trying to lay the blame somewhere for what I would come to understand was a ruleset so utterly alien from AD&D that it was D&D (as I understood it) only superficially.

Fast forward again to 2007 (?). The inter-group strife came to a head eventually, with me refusing to revert to AD&D, and my wife refusing to play or run 3.x any longer. We began searching for a new game. This was difficult for us (rest of the group included) because we had a lovingly constructed homebrew world that we'd spent the better part of 10 years developing. What we decided to do was give D&D a break while we looked for the New D&D. We played other games we enjoyed, like Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and others, even branching out into more board games to fill our game night void.

I investigated loads of games, from Chaosium Basic Role Playing, to Harn, to Palladium Fantasy to Retroclones, and many more, but all were lacking something: they weren't D&D. They didn't feel like D&D to us, and lacked the genre conventions that we'd built our world on. So, in short, they were unsuitable as a replacement. It was a struggle because I still failed to understand what I felt was wrong with 3.x in my heart but just wouldn't admit. I still played on forums regularly, and butted heads with folks who pushed crazy theories like the fact that the entire game was a broken mess beyond level 7 or so, and the way to fix it involved banning entire classes, books, options, and generally houseruling the heck out of it.

Yes, I used to be in the "how can fighters possibly be broken?" camp, and I detested the proposed solutions; either use the BoNS, which I hated for its flavour (no, I didn't try using it), or refluff a cleric as a fighter and take only melee spells. This was unacceptable to me. I didn't want to play a cleric. I wanted a fighter, dammit, and there was no way my fighters would be caught dead casting spells - neither clerical, nor BoNS anime-nonsense (before you flame - I no longer hold this view). No, something -- anything, would come along and fix what was wrong.

Finally, that left us back in D&D territory, but by this point I was so jaded and pissed at WotC for making me rebuy all the books, and their continuous treadmill of crappy splatbooks. I'd tried my hand at writing my own fantasy heartbreaker, but that was just too much work and not enough buy in from fellow players that just wanted a published book series to refer to without having to remember a separate tome of houserules. I thought that maybe Monte Cook's Books of Experimental Might, just might have the answer, but as I read it, I liked some of the changes, but I found it a hard sell with the group, most of whom were scared of the uncharted wilderness that was the country of OGL 3PP.

I'd heard of E6, which was intriguing, and Pathfinder (less scary - got in on the Alpha), and also that WotC was releasing 4e. There was no way at this point that Wizards was getting another red cent of my money (rawr), despite the gentle pleadings of one of my players to give it a try.
No way, no how was my answer (and my wife's). Worlds and Monsters talked a good talk, and s much as I liked the look and feel of what they were trying to do, we'd just been "burned by Wizards one too many times." But both E6 and PF were not working out either. Still didn't fix what was wrong in the first place (though it made strides), too many complaints remained. I was starting to wonder if those arrogant jerks I'd been butting heads with might actually be right after all...

Finally I partly gave in to my friend's suggestion and he supplied me with the intentionally leaked copies of the 4th edition PHB and DMG for me to read through. "Just read it and tell me what you think." He urged me not to prejudge. He insisted that we didn't need to try it if we all thought it was horrible. And oh boy, did we think it was horrible!

We weren't sure what to think, but it certainly didn't look anything like the D&D that we had a love-hate relationship with. We seethed at the horrid art (which was nothing like the promises of Worlds and Monsters), we hated the videogamey, keyword-infested stat blocks. We hated that the classes made us think more of WoW than D&D. In short, we thought it was awful - every bit as bad as we'd feared. Dragonborn and Tieflings in the core book didn't help matters either. And where is my beloved Bard? My wife wanted to know what they'd done with the Druid. We didn't give one whit at first about the changes to the cosmology though, because we had our own which we were perfectly happy with, and so that was not even an issue. I understand why people didn't like this change, but I thought the reaction was overblown. I even grew to like the changes. I found that they actually fired my imagination and inspired me in ways that the Great Wheel never did. I also understand why the shocking changes to the Forgotten Realms setting were so upsetting, but again, I long since stopped giving a damn about FR, and was more pissed that Greyhawk was nowhere to be found in 4e, so again, this was a non-issue for me. Though even I can recognize that sometimes to drive things forward, you have to turn your creation on its head. Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

Eventually, exhausted of other options and so frustrated with the state of our gaming that we were pretty much ready to pack it in and move on to other hobbies, we decided, "what the hell. couldn't hurt at this point. And if we hate it, we'll make a mockery of it!"

My buddy would run the game in his own "dark, gritty" world, similar to the promises in Worlds and Monsters, so we didn't have to deal with Wotsee trash like Dragonboobies and emo-Tieflings (I would have been much more okay with this if Aasimar/Devas had been in the core alongside them). My wife and I made the most obnoxious characters we could possibly think of; I made a slutty half-elf fey warlock (one of my most-hated classes in 3.x), based on Selma from the 2005 adaptation of Beowulf, and my wife made (with special permission, from MM1) a goblin Ranger MC Rogue. A cowardly human fighter, a hapless human paladin, and an obstinate human cleric rounded out our party.

We started out treating it as a complete piss-take, but lo and behold, we were having FUN! Soon enough we began to get into our characters and stopped treating it like a joke. This was actually just D&D. It may read like crap, but it plays like gold. That became our new rallying cry. And yet, we weren't fully convinced. As long as the promise of balance between classes would hold out, at higher level, we would concede defeat and give in to 4e.

To test that theory, the player of the Paladin offered to run a game in low Paragon. We would put the system to the test; no elaborate backstory, no need for plot - just run through a few combats to stretch the system. By this time PH2 was out. My wife got to try a druid, though she was disappointed that it could not spec as a healer, she gave it a try anyway, and built with as many secondary leader powers as she could. I wanted to try a Bard (my favourite class in any edition), but instead, I opted for a Paladin (my least favourite class in every edition). I used the Longtooth Shifter race to build a damage-focused character to see if I could break out of the rigid class=role system. We also had a dwarf battlerager fighter (pre-errata), a half-orc warlord, and two human rogues.

Dammit, we were having fun with this, too! Combats were difficult, but we found that if we worked together, the seemingly impossible odds could be overcome. We had some close calls, but it was some of the most engaging D&D combat we'd ever had! And the kicker was that even though it was supposed to be a D&D Fight Club, we still couldn't resist roleplaying it. This was when I/we truly realized the power of the mechanics. All the powers and options combined to produce flavour in play, rather than on the page. I couldn't help but roleplay my character as a fierce and valourous warrior who badgered the cowardly into action in the name of Kord (a bit like an honourable Klingon).

So that was it. We were converted. My wife and I were in love with D&D again for the first time since we'd met at the gaming table 10 years prior, and things only looked up from there. I finally felt like the game was delivering on the promise that it made on the back copy of the books.

Essentials came along, and though the tone from WotC was worrisome, the products were excellent and filled yet another niche in the 4e lineup. Options for players who wanted simple, yet effective characters! Finally! I liked some of the new design space that was being explored. It made me realize that the game could be pushed much further still. So when 5e was announced, I was thrilled!

Unfortunately, the 4e-bashing started almost right away, and from the designers to boot! Elation turned to disappointment, and my hopes crashed as interview after interview, Mike Mearls and his staff continued throwing 4e and its design assumptions under the bus, in order to curry favour with lapsed players. On the one hand, I understood why they were doing it, but I resented it all the same. I had never failed to have sympathy for the folks that felt betrayed by WotC in the leadup to 4e, but I couldn't understand their anger. I still don't. Resentment and disappointment, sure, but not the anger.

As the playtest progressed I lost more and more hope that the game would deliver on its promise as the Unifying Edition of D&D. Nothing I was seeing was delivering on the promise that it could play anything like 4e. In fact, it appeared to drift ever-closer to everything I detested about 3.x, with only the thin veneer of nostalgia imparted by superficial touches from AD&D, and occasional, ineffective nods to 4e design. I now knew what I wanted from a game, and how to recognize it, thanks in part to conversations with @pemerton , @Manbearcat , and other like-minded 4e players, many of whom have appeared in this thread, and I was not and am not seeing enough of what I need to be excited about the new edition any longer. I voiced my concerns, both here and in the playtest feedback, but it felt like I was just pissing into the wind, so I've pretty much given up at this point. Unlike the 3.x/4e transition, I've learned my lesson, and I've read most of the basic rules (where my time allows), and while it doesn't look like my cup of tea, I still have 4e, and I am in any case reserving final judgement until I see and try the books that supposedly contain the options to remake Next in 4e's image.

One drop in the bucket that flies in the face of what's being said about people not playing games they don't like, and not giving 4e a chance. I was very, very close to pulling the plug, without having even played the game, and I don't think I'm alone. I have seen post after post of folks bashing the game, but admitting that they didn't even play it. Or only ran a couple sessions using crap modules and declaring the game to be bad. But I was almost that guy! I went in with the most jaded and cynical attitude imaginable and the game won me over in spite of myself.

So that's it. If you're still here, thanks for reading.

 

[Remathilis]

None of these facts - about me, about you - call out any category of mechanis that is distinctively "dissociated".

No, but it speaks to tolerance levels. Or specifically, why something like HP doesn't raise my ire (indeed, I prefer it to more associative systems like vitality/wound points) but can't wrap my brain around ooze-tripping or CaGI.

 

[pemerton]

In the case of certain things not being able to be repeated, where limited-use physical powers are concerned - even if you interpret the page 42 rules as allowing you to break the metagame limitation on how often such powers can be used, you still can't utilize them with the same degree of efficacy, for no in-game reason that stands up to scrutiny, as demonstrated in previous posts.

It baffles me that you can't see that "stands up to scrutiny" is not an objective criterion.

a player using only the associated mechanics knows exactly why in the fiction something is or is not feasible for their character. Your characters in the game know exactly why a cleric, but not a pious fighter, can cast divine magic (mostly due to their being a difference between having divine intervention in answer to a prayer

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that, in playing D&D, I have not known why a cleric but not a pious fighter has his/her prayers answered.

The game rules don't tell me why this is - they just tell me that it is. And the fiction doesn't contain any explanation either. Again, I draw the contrast with Runequest. (Are you familiar with how divine magic works in RQ?) In RQ it is clear, in the fiction, why one character but not another can use divine magic - because the character who can has joined a cult, is paying tithes, has sacrifice personal spiritual energy, etc.

the answer isn't a detailed one, but it doesn't need details for the exact nature of what clerical training is anymore than it needs to give us the details for exactly what type of attack a fighter is making each time he makes an attack roll.

You criterion earlier in the post I'm quoting was "answer that stands up to scrutiny". I'm surprised that you can't see that, for some players (like me), the "clerical training" towards which you are gesturing does not stand up to scrutiny.

That's different than figuring out why an ostensibly physical power can't be used more than once during a fight.

For me, the difference is that the latter causes no problems at all. It doesn't remotely hurt my suspension of disbelief, my sense of what is happening in the ficiton, my sense of verisimilitude, or my immersion in the ingame situation, that some manoevres are not repeatable simply because the occasion for their use has not arisen again.

Dexterity isn't a measure of your speed

From the AD&D PHB (p 11):

Dexterity encompasses a number of physical attributes including hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, precision, balance, and speed of movement.​

I don't have my 3E PHB in front of me, but I'd be surprised if it's very different. For instance, if DEX is not about speed and reflexes than why does it affect initiative, dodging and reflex saves?

nor does it mean that you can't make a mistake in combat and leave yourself open enough where even an opponent with a slower reaction time couldn't make the attempt to take advantage of it.

<snip>

the existence of an attack of opportunity does include a reference to yoru stated intentions: you just said that you declared an attack! Likewise, if the goblin misses, you are still narrated as having dropped your guard - the goblin took advantage of the opportunity and made an attack (since he made an attack roll); it just failed to damage you.

If the goblin failed to damage me, that means that I didn't drop my guard, that I didn't leave an opening. (Because if I had left an opening, then I would have been skewered. There is bascially no such thing, in swordplay betwen competent fighters, as leaving an opening for an enemy yet not being struck by them.)

The idea that an attack roll represents a flurry of strikes, counter-strikes, feints, etc. is one that I've never found to be slightly plausible. If that was the case, then why does wielding a weapon in your other hand grant you an additional attack? Why does having poison on a weapon still poison an opponent if all you did was make him more tired from dodging when you dealt hit point damage? Etc.

Well, it's your prerogative to ignore the way in which the rulebooks describe the ingame fiction.

For me, the notion that two warriors would stand there and exchange blows at a rate of one per 6 seconds - like the notorious OoTS duel of clerics - is ludicrous. I assume that the function of the mechanics is to help me resolve a swordfight that looks like a real-world one, not to define some other process that has no analogue in the real world.

The game mechanics represent in-character analogues that the characters are aware of.

<snip>

There is a difference between hitting on a 10 and hitting on a 12.

What is the difference? Especially if the hit on a 10 deals max damage, and the hit on a 12 deals min damage.

I have never played an RPG where all of the mechanics are taken, by the players, to correlate to in-fiction events that the characters are aware of. (Eg in Rolemaster, the crit roll is not taken to correlate to an in-fiction event that the character is aware of. Rather, it retroactively determines where the opening was that the attacker was able to take advantage of eg a strike to the leg, to the head, etc.)

You can make an awkward attack that still manages to score a large amount of damage, the same way you can land a skillful attack that deals only a little.

I don't understand how a skillful attack can be basically ineffective. In what sense, then, was it skillful?

Or are you saying that the damage roll corresponds in part to blocking, parrying etc by the defender? (In which case, as a player, part of my PC's activity is determined by the GM's damage rolls.)

See my previous posts for this. The construction of ordered "turns" in combat is an issue of presentation as the players see it. The segmenting of different "turns" in combat represents characters all dong things in the same short amount of time, where some actions manage to complete before others - even then, the issue of "complete before others" is an issue of presentation for the players, since the issue of "one round ends and another begins" isn't one that affects what happens in the game world.

This doesn't explain how a peasant rail gun is not possible.

For instance, in turn-by-turn combat a PC can start 10' away from an enemy, cast a R:10' spell against them that takes (presumably) some finite time to cast (eg a material component has to be taken out of a pouch, words chanted, etc) and then move a full movement speed away from them. I don't have to declare a run, even though I have moved my maximum walking speed for 6 seconds in fewer than 6 seconds. Furthermore, the enemy can't immediately follow, and so, for instance, if they had an effect cast on me that requires remaining within 20', then I will have broken it. (This was [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s problem that he described upthread.)

My question is, what is the ingame explanation for this? Why was I able to move more than 20' away from my enemy (and break the spell). If you say that the turn system is just a device for presenting simultaneous action then it is even more mysterious: because if it is all simultaneous, then why was I able to increase the separation from 10' to 20'?

There are initiative systems that don't raise these problems. (Eg some versions of initiative in Rolemaster, which are bascially continuous rather than turn-by-turn.) But 3E and 4e D&D do raise them. The structure of initiative and turns imposes limits and generates consequences that have no self-evident explanation in the fiction.

That said, chases have always been the sticky wicket of turn-based combat, since the turn-based presentation can model simultaneous actions adequately enough, but has a harder time representing actions whose results are modified by other simultaneous actions

<snip>

That's not an issue of dissociation, however (since every metagame mechanic had a corresponding in-game action that it was representing, and vice versa). There's still no doubt that the combat rules are representing everyone acting at the same time

<snip>

The scenario you described has no mechanics that affect the in-character narrative without having an in-game reason for doing so - it's just that the rules could arguably do a better job of it, not that they're failing to do it at all.

But the action isn't all simultaneous. For instance, if an AoO is triggered, it clearly takes effect before the event that triggered it (even though that event is declared first at the table).

A peasant rail gun exploits this feature of the mechanics, to enable the pole to be accelerated to ridiculous speeds by the consecutive resolution of hundreds of readied actions within an ostensible 6-second timeframe.

In LostSoul's situation, the problem is the opposite - rather than the system generating more motion than is actually possible, it limits motion without any ingame rationale. Another example is the fact that, in 3E and 4e, a character who attakcs and then moves 5' to a door and open it has to come to a stop. In 5e, on the other hand, the character can keep moving. In 4e, the character stopping well short of his/her maximum physically feasible movement does not have any ingame explanation. It is an artefact of the action economy.

the presumption is that - even in a fantasy game - something that has an analogue in the real world and is not explicitly redefined within the context of the fantasy world is presumed to function the same way that it does in the real world.

Martial PCs in 4e have no analogue in the real world, because some of their abilities stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals.

Besides the ambiguous reference to "some martial powers stand well beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals," there's nothing suggesting that these powers are anything but ordinary physical abilities.

First, in what way is that ambiguous?

Second, there are the references to mental reserves, to willpower and to discipline.

Which doesn't make it "magic by another name". Jet Li's character in Tai Chi Master is not using magic by another name. Batman does not use magic by another name. They are just able to do stuff that ordinary people can't. Much as a dragon can fly without magic, even though in the real world that would be impossible.

That's because you're leaving the GM out of the equation here. If all of the players want to emulate a particular genre, that should include the GM attempting to frame the world, the campaign, the adventures, and the encounters in ways that lead into that.

But what would that actually look like in 1st level Moldvay Basic? There are no encounters in that system that don't have a good chance of killing 1st level PCs.

 

[BryonD]

One drop in the bucket that flies in the face of what's being said about people not playing games they don't like, and not giving 4e a chance. I was very, very close to pulling the plug, without having even played the game, and I don't think I'm alone. I have seen post after post of folks bashing the game, but admitting that they didn't even play it. Or only ran a couple sessions using crap modules and declaring the game to be bad. But I was almost that guy! I went in with the most jaded and cynical attitude imaginable and the game won me over in spite of myself.

Noted without dispute.

Also noted is that the 4E fanbase declined over time and many people say they saw more and more warts on the system as time went by.
It truly does cut both ways and, in the end, the market spoke.

I guess the point is, it is fair to expect your perspective and love of the game to be respected.
But if you want that, you should really try returning the favor and not lumping everyone into a minority that is easy to criticize.'

 

[Remathilis]

One drop in the bucket that flies in the face of what's being said about people not playing games they don't like, and not giving 4e a chance. I was very, very close to pulling the plug, without having even played the game, and I don't think I'm alone. I have seen post after post of folks bashing the game, but admitting that they didn't even play it. Or only ran a couple sessions using crap modules and declaring the game to be bad. But I was almost that guy! I went in with the most jaded and cynical attitude imaginable and the game won me over in spite of myself.

So that's it. If you're still here, thanks for reading.

I'm glad. Your experiences are a complete inverse of mine.

I started in 2e (after a brief stint in Basic). I even tinkered with Player's Option (but very quickly it got abandoned). When 3e was coming out, it sounded a LOT like my houserules: clerics get extra healing, druids no longer fighting to gain levels, open multi-classing and relaxed class/race restrictions. Things like upwards AC and Fort/Ref/Will were almost no brainer choices. Sure our group had some hold outs (some groups I played with played 2e until 2002) but eventually everyone agreed 3e was superior. By 2005, we were ALL playing 3.5.

Yeah, we had our issues. Fighters got boring and prestige-class stacking got important. Magic items abound and the npc/monster creation math is rough. So when 4e came around some of us were ready. I was a early adopter; the translation from 2e to 3e was smooth, this one should be too. It wasn't.

Combats were long, boring slogs that mostly involved using all encounter powers and then spamming at wills for 10 or 20 rounds (depending on the monster's hp and amount of missed attacks). Dungeons were set-piece after set piece with no exploration. Skill challenges were actively borked. People wanted druids, bards, and gnomes and disliked waiting for them. The monster manual was a collection of stat blocks with little personality or even how to use the monsters. Magic items were hopelessly boring. Vancian magic (which we associated as D&D magic) was gone: without it wizards felt wrong and clerics downright alien. Fireball was different. Magic missile was different. Cure Light Wounds was different. Potions of Healing were different. The names were there, but literally nothing we knew of D&D from either 2e or 3e was relevant anymore. And that didn't EVEN begin to touch martial dailies, combat roles (and similar mechanics for classes leading to sameness) ADEU, healing surges, and ritual magic.

Nothing even remotely hinted that we were playing "ze same game" but some of the names and terminology. 3e felt like the natural extension of what 2e was like in 1998; 4e felt like a new game with D&D names and mechanics grafted on. And it broke our hearts. We went back to 3.5 and then on to Pathfinder. Some of us moved off D&D completely and started playing non fantasy RPGs. By 2009, nobody I knew was playing 4e.

But in return, 5e has reignited the spark. It has 1st level spell slots and bards and gnomes and magic missiles like I remember. Combat is quick, spells have words (and not keywords) and fighters look different than clerics on paper. I see the old game under all the new mechanics. I hope when I get all three books I will be able to play the D&D I was promised in 2008 but never came through.

Of course this is all IMHO and YMMV, but for me it was real. I wasn't lied to or misinformed. I gave it my all. And 4e did blossom into a better game that it was in 2008, but for me it still wouldn't have been enough. I'm happy 5e looks like it will be.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Noted without dispute.

Also noted is that the 4E fanbase declined over time and many people say they saw more and more warts on the system as time went by.

Just like every edition, albeit sooner than I'd have preferred, but as noted upthread, it is just as much about unrealistic corporate sales targets (this was revealed by a former WotC insider), Paizo eating their lunch (observed sales data), and the need to reunify the community. It's a shame that they turned their back on the OGL.

It truly does cut both ways and, in the end, the market spoke.

Fortunately for me, I don't care at all about "the market" or what that may or may not imply about my edition of choice. I am not particularly swayed by Ad Populum arguments on subjective matters. In any case, I have enough materials to carry me for years and enough savvy to houserule around the "warts" if I find them glaring enough. I also have tools independent of what WotC hosts, so I'm not even all that worried about them pulling the plug on 4e DDI. Then again, who knows, perhaps the next edition will knock my socks off, but so far it hasn't. In the meantime, I'll continue to keep a critical eye on things, and I may end up changing, if Next can add something to my game.

I guess the point is, it is fair to expect your perspective and love of the game to be respected.
But if you want that, you should really try returning the favor and not lumping everyone into a minority that is easy to criticize.'

There are plenty of folk who don't care for 4e whose opinions I respect because they have been articulated well and politely without resorting to making false statements and blind hate. There are also plenty who don't fall into that category and to whom my descriptors apply.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Fortunately for me, I don't care at all about "the market" or what that may or may not imply about my edition of choice. I am not particularly swayed by Ad Populum arguments on subjective matters. In any case, I have enough materials to carry me for years and enough savvy to houserule around the "warts" if I find them glaring enough. I also have tools independent of what WotC hosts, so I'm not even all that worried about them pulling the plug on 4e DDI. Then again, who knows, perhaps the next edition will knock my socks off, but so far it hasn't. In the meantime, I'll continue to keep a critical eye on things, and I may end up changing, if Next can add something to my game.

I do not mean to be overly harsh with this.

I think that's part of an inherent disconnect: While it is true you don't care what the market has to say, WotC does. And they are the ones who produce the core game and choose how licensing is handled. Unfortunately, this means that how much support any edition gets is in the hands of the very forces you don't care about. Which is ultimately why it matters in terms of how the edition will be viewed in the long term.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm glad. Your experiences are a complete inverse of mine.

I started in 2e (after a brief stint in Basic). I even tinkered with Player's Option (but very quickly it got abandoned). When 3e was coming out, it sounded a LOT like my houserules: clerics get extra healing, druids no longer fighting to gain levels, open multi-classing and relaxed class/race restrictions. Things like upwards AC and Fort/Ref/Will were almost no brainer choices. Sure our group had some hold outs (some groups I played with played 2e until 2002) but eventually everyone agreed 3e was superior. By 2005, we were ALL playing 3.5.

I hear you - I used many of the same houserules you did. So when most of them found their way into 3e, it sounded like another revision, like 2e was to 1e. But for some of my group, it was not such a no-brainer in the end, and we could not agree on 3.x being superior. There was much gnashing of teeth and howling. It nearly drove us to quit gaming entirely, much as you point out 4e nearly did for your group, so I'm sure you can understand where we were at, mentally, and emotionally, during that era.

Yeah, we had our issues. Fighters got boring and prestige-class stacking got important. Magic items abound and the npc/monster creation math is rough. So when 4e came around some of us were ready. I was a early adopter; the translation from 2e to 3e was smooth, this one should be too. It wasn't.

I do agree that the transition could have been handled better, but I wasn't paying attention to anything WotC did at the time, so I didn't really care then. Since then, of course, I have had to go and remake all my old, favourite characters in 4e, and in many cases had to wait until the sourcebooks to make it work were released. This, I agree is frustrating, so I hope they don't drag their feet too much with 5e, or I may not care by the time it does arrive, if it does at all.

Combats were long, boring slogs that mostly involved using all encounter powers and then spamming at wills for 10 or 20 rounds (depending on the monster's hp and amount of missed attacks). Dungeons were set-piece after set piece with no exploration. Skill challenges were actively borked. People wanted druids, bards, and gnomes and disliked waiting for them. The monster manual was a collection of stat blocks with little personality or even how to use the monsters. Magic items were hopelessly boring. Vancian magic (which we associated as D&D magic) was gone: without it wizards felt wrong and clerics downright alien. Fireball was different. Magic missile was different. Cure Light Wounds was different. Potions of Healing were different. The names were there, but literally nothing we knew of D&D from either 2e or 3e was relevant anymore. And that didn't EVEN begin to touch martial dailies, combat roles (and similar mechanics for classes leading to sameness) ADEU, healing surges, and ritual magic.

I have experienced some of these things. Maybe our reduced reliance on published material and an increased desire to invent our own things smoothed over some of these warts. Our legacy heroes had a lot of legacy gear, for example, and by and large that stuff could be used as is and adjudicated on the fly. I could continue to point out similarities in experiences and differences, and even how some of these problems were overcome for us by errata, updates, or houserules, but I don't want to get too long-winded for no point at all. You've moved on, and I can respect that. I've been there.

Nothing even remotely hinted that we were playing "ze same game" but some of the names and terminology. 3e felt like the natural extension of what 2e was like in 1998; 4e felt like a new game with D&D names and mechanics grafted on. And it broke our hearts.

This is a key difference for us. Maybe I didn't need to feel like I was playing the same game. If that's what I was after, I could have gone back to AD&D. To me, it felt like the components I liked, and wanted to keep to make it still feel like D&D to me were still there, but given a modern makeover. I can understand how this would not appeal to everyone, but for me, that was enough. It gave me a game that was outside of D&D's box, which was what I oringally set out for, that still retained enough of D&D's trappings that it still felt at home in my long-running campaign.

We went back to 3.5 and then on to Pathfinder. Some of us moved off D&D completely and started playing non fantasy RPGs. By 2009, nobody I knew was playing 4e.

This is where I was at the end of the 3e era. We talked about going back to AD&D. Even dusted off the old sheets and tried backporting some of our characters to mixed effect. Ultimately, we nearly pulled the plug, not only on D&D, but on the hobby as a whole.

But in return, 5e has reignited the spark. It has 1st level spell slots and bards and gnomes and magic missiles like I remember. Combat is quick, spells have words (and not keywords) and fighters look different than clerics on paper. I see the old game under all the new mechanics. I hope when I get all three books I will be able to play the D&D I was promised in 2008 but never came through.

5e started out that way for me, but I quickly started losing interest. As presented, it is not the game I want to be playing. It doesn't do, from what I've seen, what I come to demand from the game. And clearly this is where preferences lie, because what you state as problems for you, I see as features. I don't mind longer combats (sometimes), I like keywords, and I couldn't care less what a character looks like on paper so much as how it plays at the table. And for me, it is a problem that I see the Old Game (meaning, for me, mostly 3.x) under the new-ish mechanics.

Of course this is all IMHO and YMMV, but for me it was real. I wasn't lied to or misinformed. I gave it my all. And 4e did blossom into a better game that it was in 2008, but for me it still wouldn't have been enough. I'm happy 5e looks like it will be.

I understand and respect that. I guess you weren't one of the ones I was referring to, but make no mistake, there ARE people who are misinformed and spreading that misinformation as objective truth, and like others, I will counter that where I find it.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I do not mean to be overly harsh with this.

I think that's part of an inherent disconnect: While it is true you don't care what the market has to say, WotC does. And they are the ones who produce the core game and choose how licensing is handled. Unfortunately, this means that how much support any edition gets is in the hands of the very forces you don't care about. Which is ultimately why it matters in terms of how the edition will be viewed in the long term.

I don't see a disconnect, not on a personal level, at any rate.

It's fine and dandy that WotC cares. It's their job to do so. I'm not bitter anymore. I simply don't care. All that has given way to disappointed indifference concerning the future of the game. I don't care if 4e ever sees another ounce of support, or if 5e never supports that playstyle. I have what I need and enough ideas to last a lifetime.

Would I like them to revisit 4e at some point, maybe even offer a potential 4.5? Yes, I would. Heck even if it fell to the 3PP (which won't happen, of course). But I'll not get worked up about it. Would I like them to make a version of next that cuts to the core of the 4e experience? Yes, I would. But I it doesn't matter to me if they actually do, because I still have 4e, and what I don't have, is the slightest confidence that they could even do it without screwing it up.