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

[Raith5]

When I first read about skill challenges I was like "What an incredible amount of potential this has!!! Now I just need to completely rework how they're doing it."

For many people in the 4e playing community, SCs got the wheels turning, not so much as a finished idea that was teh awesomes but more as a seed that seemed like it could become something amazing.

Rituals were similar, but there was less to build on. The idea that there are spells that are lots more powerful than normal spells but that can't be cast in combat is great. The execution though was... here are some spells? and they cost gold to cast?

Wasted.

Agree on both counts. Isnt 5e taking basically the same approach to rituals? I like to see an option that some rituals as requiring quite particular components or something else.

 

[Samurai]

Agree on both counts. Isnt 5e taking basically the same approach to rituals? I like to see an option that some rituals as requiring quite particular components or something else.

No, rituals are very different in 5e. First, you can prepare it as a spell in order to cast it in a round or so if you want. Or you can cast it as a ritual, taking longer but not using a spell slot for the day. Also, not every ritual necessarily costs money to cast. In effect, all the old rituals are back to being spells again, but may also be cast slowly as a ritual for free if desired.

 

[pemerton]

Speaking for myself, 4e is when D&D finally fulfilled the promises it had been making to me since 1982.

This is true for me too.

The Foreword to Moldvay Basic, with the slaying of the dragon tyrant with a sword gifted by a mysterious cleric, was what I was looking for.

Oriental Adventures, in 1986, was the first version of D&D where I started to work out, as a GM, how to achieve it (eg focused PC design, rules for backgrounds, a default backstory that integrated those PC backgrounds, etc). But for me 4e took D&D to new levels.

if you follow the progress of D&D, 4e sticks out. It alone will be a special snowflake in terms of world, mechanics, tone, and design.

I tend to think that this is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps depends on what parts of D&D's progress have been most salient to any given player.

For me, 4e emphasises and really develops parts of D&D mechanics that were always there - classes, levels, hit points, non-simulationist saving throws, etc - whereas 3E seems that it's trying to turn D&D into something it's not (a would-be process simulation still saddled with classes, levels and hit point).

The first set of books give very little cogent advice or direction on how to effectively use the mechanics beyond setting up AWESOME! encounters. I personally didn't even see it as all that much of a mechanical evolution and totally whiffed on running it "indie" style.

<snip>

When I came here after the 5e announcement, I was flabbergasted by the way folks like you and pemerton described your games. (Still am, to some extent.)

My suspicion is Manbearcat and pemerton fell into a mode of play the designers didn't understand existed in their game. I certainly never saw strong indie advice or any offerings of that sort of play in any published material produced by WotC

I'm always happy to be a crazed and daring trailblazer, but on this occasion I feel I was just following the lead of the designers.

Worlds & Monsters, for instance, talked about re-presenting and in some cases "re-concepting" D&D monsters, D&D gods and similar story elements to make them speak more to actual play. That is, to me, a very "indie" sentiment. And when skill challenges were first previewed on the WotC site, they were clearly an attempt at a scene-resolution mechanic of the sort found in games like Maelstrom Storytelling or HeroWars/Quest. (And, with their back-and-forth between GM framing and players rolling all the dice I think they have strengths that not all forms of such mechanic have, even if they have weaknesses as well.)

Contrary to what's being said in this thread, there were plenty of other comments and previews in the period leading up to release (see for instance this index on the WotC site). And to me, at least, they made it clear that the game aimed to use the mechanics in classic indie fashion - rather than ignoring the dice to tell a story (which is the classic 2nd ed AD&D/White Wolf "golden rule" approach), the game was being designed so that using the mechanics would produce classic D&D stories. This was what Worlds & Monsters spoke about, and what those previews spoke about too.

And Rob Heinsoo himself, in a pre-release interview, made the comparison to indie games:

There might not be anyone else out there who would publish this kind of game. They usually get entrenched in the simulation aspect.

Indie games are similar in that they emphasize the gameplay aspect, but they’re super-focused, like a narrow laser. D&D has to be more general to accommodate a wide range of play.​

That interview was given on March 5 2008. Between it, and Worlds & Monsters (I didn't look much at Races & Classes which seems a lot less interesting), plus the previews on their website, I wasn't surprised at all by how 4e turned out - except that it was even better than I had hoped!

I think those who were shocked, upon release, perhaps hadn't really taken the designers at their word, or hadn't fully appreciated that they really were setting out to build an RPG where using the action resolution mechanics is not some sort of supplement to playing the game, but is playing the game.

 

[pemerton]

No, rituals are very different in 5e. First, you can prepare it as a spell in order to cast it in a round or so if you want. Or you can cast it as a ritual, taking longer but not using a spell slot for the day. Also, not every ritual necessarily costs money to cast. In effect, all the old rituals are back to being spells again, but may also be cast slowly as a ritual for free if desired.

I'm not seeing how this is different from 4e in ways that are relevant to [MENTION=91777]Dungeoneer[/MENTION]'s comment. They still take the form of spells that can be cast more-or-less at will outside of the combat action economy, and that have gp cost as their principal limiting factor.

I don't see how they do a better job than 4e rituals of "being the seeds of something amazing", which was what Dungeoneer was talking about. (I'm guessing that Dungeoneer is a fan of the way 13th Age handles rituals.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

My suspicion is Manbearcat and pemerton fell into a mode of play the designers didn't understand existed in their game.

I think that Rob Heinsoo understood it - and left early. I'm absolutely sure that Mike Mearls did not - and it was only presented in places even if it's how I've always run the game (to the point of my almost incomprehension that others didn't see [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style as normal).

<My final thoughts on this, I promise>

I maintain a theory (and if there is proof to substantiate it, I'd love to see it) that 4e was released "half-baked". For whatever reason, it was rushed out the door without enough time to fix the issues it had.

We have an actual timeline as to what happened. 4E was allocated two years for development starting in June 2005. In April 2007 it was turned in to time. In about February 2006 they discarded most of Orcus 1 for being needlessly fiddly and complicated, giving every class a separate recharge mechanic and where the highlight of the system was, according to Heinsoo the following exchange:

"The liquification track. Aboleths: be very worried when they bring out the straw."

"No, we don't have a liquification track because it's part of the swallow-whole track."


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.

 

[Umbran]

I think that Rob Heinsoo understood it - and left early. I'm absolutely sure that Mike Mearls did not

I, once, had occasion to play a game run by Mearls (Dying Earth, not D&D), and got to hear about some of the games he played during the house-con we were attending. I would not be quick to claim he doesn't understand any particular style of play, if I were you. The gent may not be perfect, but he has quite a breadth of style at his command.

It is easy to claim that a system not doing what you want it to do is some personal flaw of some designer - it isn't there because, in some sense the *person* was lacking. It is somewhat less easy to accept that what you want to do was not included for some reason or reasons, because you then have to address the question of whether maybe they were actually pretty good reasons.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I, once, had occasion to play a game run by Mearls (Dying Earth, not D&D), and got to hear about some of the games he played during the house-con we were attending. I would not be quick to claim he doesn't understand any particular style of play, if I were you. The gent may not be perfect, but he has quite a breadth of style at his command.

It is easy to claim that a system not doing what you want it to do is some personal flaw of some designer - it isn't there because, in some sense the *person* was lacking. It is somewhat less easy to accept that what you want to do was not included for some reason or reasons, because you then have to address the question of whether maybe they were actually pretty good reasons.

I am not talking about Mearls' work in 5E. I'm talking about his 4E work, starting with the excrable Keep on the Shadowfell. And his subsequent statements about shouting wounds closed and the like. If Mearls doesn't make 5E like 4E that's one thing. If he can't play to 4E's strengths when writing for 4E that's something else entirely.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I'm not seeing how this is different from 4e in ways that are relevant to @Dungeoneer's comment. They still take the form of spells that can be cast more-or-less at will outside of the combat action economy, and that have gp cost as their principal limiting factor.

I don't see how they do a better job than 4e rituals of "being the seeds of something amazing", which was what Dungeoneer was talking about. (I'm guessing that Dungeoneer is a fan of the way 13th Age handles rituals.)

13th Age is a definite improvement, although I could still imagine an even more interesting approach. I would like to see something that features really big, epic spells that require components to cast. Of course, it's possible I'm just wishing that someone would graft Ars Magica onto my game!

I feel like rituals could be a way to solve the perpetual superiority of magic users. How do you have a high level wizard whose spells can break reality not be ridiculously overpowered in combat? Well with rituals you could theoretically tune his combat spells for balance and leave the game-breaking stuff outside of combat. 13th Age does at least offer this possibility.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I am not talking about Mearls' work in 5E. I'm talking about his 4E work, starting with the excrable Keep on the Shadowfell. And his subsequent statements about shouting wounds closed and the like. If Mearls doesn't make 5E like 4E that's one thing. If he can't play to 4E's strengths when writing for 4E that's something else entirely.

Indeed. When I heard Mearls was on the 4E team, I was excited, I have to say, based on his 3.XE/d20 work, which whilst very much imperfect, was bursting with interesting ideas (imho).

But the 4E adventures attributed to him really made me re-think that. H1-H3 are bad adventures. H2 significantly less bad, but they are all bad both mechanically and conceptually (and are particularly internally logically incoherent/inconsistent, which is very problematic when you run adventures NOT as a succession of combat encounters, but actual y'know, adventures), and particularly weak as 4E designs.

And as you say, his later comments are, frankly, strange. How the heck did he design for 4E if he thinks Warlords are "shouting wounds closed". Either he didn't think that, and was playing to the 4E-hating crowd (nasty move, imo, if so), or he did think that, and was annoyed with the design throughout 4E, but kept it to himself before suddenly revealing it when convenient for him. Bizarre either way. I'd love to hear him explain that one.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I'm always happy to be a crazed and daring trailblazer, but on this occasion I feel I was just following the lead of the designers.

Worlds & Monsters, for instance, talked about re-presenting and in some cases "re-concepting" D&D monsters, D&D gods and similar story elements to make them speak more to actual play. That is, to me, a very "indie" sentiment. And when skill challenges were first previewed on the WotC site, they were clearly an attempt at a scene-resolution mechanic of the sort found in games like Maelstrom Storytelling or HeroWars/Quest. (And, with their back-and-forth between GM framing and players rolling all the dice I think they have strengths that not all forms of such mechanic have, even if they have weaknesses as well.)

Contrary to what's being said in this thread, there were plenty of other comments and previews in the period leading up to release (see for instance this index on the WotC site). And to me, at least, they made it clear that the game aimed to use the mechanics in classic indie fashion - rather than ignoring the dice to tell a story (which is the classic 2nd ed AD&D/White Wolf "golden rule" approach), the game was being designed so that using the mechanics would produce classic D&D stories. This was what Worlds & Monsters spoke about, and what those previews spoke about too.

And Rob Heinsoo himself, in a pre-release interview, made the comparison to indie games:

There might not be anyone else out there who would publish this kind of game. They usually get entrenched in the simulation aspect.

Indie games are similar in that they emphasize the gameplay aspect, but they’re super-focused, like a narrow laser. D&D has to be more general to accommodate a wide range of play.​

Given that Rob Heinsoo went on to work on 13th Age which basically picks up all these ideas and runs with them, I would say that he absolutely 'knew what he was doing' when he was working on 4e. Although 13A certainly benefits from the 'test bed' that was 4e (for instance, having classes that work very differently while still being relatively balanced).

I agree 100% that one of the revolutionary things about 4e was the fact that they put storytelling right into the mechanics. They made sure that fighters had abilities that made them FEEL like a fighter every time they were used. Same with, say, tieflings. If you are playing a tiefling fighter and you step up to the front line in battle and follow up TIDE OF IRON with INFERNAL REBUKE you are already immersing yourself in your character without having to come up with so much as an ounce of backstory.

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.

These are SUPER flavorful mechanics that will give players on the battlemat no doubt about what they are fighting. I loved them.