cavalier973
Hero
Another option is to go to dndclassics and purchase the pdfs of the bona fide 4e ruleset.
D&D 4E Is there any 4e Retro Clones out there?
delericho
Legend
That's actually the crux of it - the original retroclones came about because good quality old books were becoming hard to find, and because they wanted a basis from which to develop source materials. With 4e neither of these is an issue now - the original books are easily available in both print and PDF (and likely to remain so), while support materials can and are being done by the OGL.
So there's not really any motivation for putting in the work to develop a clone. Though you might get traction for some sort of 4e near-clone project, if you were so inclined.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I don't really think that's the issue. I just checked Ebay, a 3rd printing of the 1e PHB, in like new condition, goes for under $20 there. These books were mass produced in quantities which guarantee they will be easily available and cheap for decades to come. I believe the retro-clone phenomenon was more a matter of aesthetics. It is probably also driven more by a desire to clean up and customize the Original D&D than simply to possess some sort of copy of its rules. In fact I don't think the retro-clones are really a recent thing. I think even back in the 80's people were recompiling their own private versions of the old D&D rules. Playing with massively hacked compendia of amalgams of Dragon articles, supplements, bits of different rule books, homebrew, etc. The advent of self-publishing tools just caused some of the more ambitious of these to emerge into the light and be passed around. The OGL provided enough of a fig leaf that a few people were able to put a few bucks into really cleaning up and for real publishing the best examples.
So, 4e might get a similar kind of treatment, some day. What has to happen I think is a further 'digestion', and then the gaming community has to move on from its d20-like phase to whatever the next iteration of said games is, so that the space is left open. Then a lot of homebrew will gestate in that space and some of it will be passed around as self-published 'hacks' that one day might get cleaned up and actually published (though that's less likely than with 1e and its ilk unless WotC issues a newer OGL-type license to fig leaf it better).
I'd give it 10 years.
There are a couple of ways around it:
Make a point buy system that duplicates powers from 4e. Not all powers follow the system, but it shouldn't be too hard to make a system that recreates the feel.
Make a system that can obviously use 4e material, even if the levels don't match up - if a 10 level clone gains an encounter power at 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, that matches up to 1, 3, 7, 11, 13, 17 reasonably well. A PC playing the game who hits 4th and is a Fighter, could take Come And Get It because the power definitions are reasonably similar.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, now we reach the phase of the discussion that this thread has reached many times before in its past incarnations (The Eternal Thread, was it first named Erekose?). What's a 'clone'. I mean how far does it have to be from 4e to be a clone, because a game like what you are talking about is almost as far from 4e as 13a is. If that's a clone then the question has been answered.
Obviously there has to be some leeway, so presumably we'll all draw a line somewhere between "actual 4e" and "13a", but then we get into the phase of the thread where we start to enumerate the things that can't change and how much other things CAN change, etc.
What I'm running these days is definitely IMHO not 4e, though you COULD take 'Come and Get It' and attach it to a character and basically it would make sense, about as much as a 2e Ranger would make sense in 3e, you can extrapolate from the old rules to the new rules and project answers to all the questions that come up, and then it will 'work' at some level.
MoutonRustique
Explorer
As an "aside" (but completely w/ the the title's context!), have you guys seen a pdf title Tyrants & Tactics?
It's basically a 4e almost completely de-fluffed (it's all that h4ters hate... squared!) and, well, it's awesome! Not so much as a game in and off itself, but as a kind of brick to build your own ~4e~.
I have no clue where I found this... (I think it was on 4enclave somewhere?) and was wondering if you'd seen/heard of it.
??
It's basically a 4e almost completely de-fluffed (it's all that h4ters hate... squared!) and, well, it's awesome! Not so much as a game in and off itself, but as a kind of brick to build your own ~4e~.
I have no clue where I found this... (I think it was on 4enclave somewhere?) and was wondering if you'd seen/heard of it.
??
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'm pretty sure I've talked to the guy a few times. There's also a project called 'Born of Legend' that is a sort of even MORE tactical and fiddly 4e variant. I'm not sure where they are with that now. Really there are a LOT of people out there doing stuff with the ideas, but I think right now indy games are just BIG, and d20 is pretty much sitting in the 5e, PF, and some 13a land with not a lot else happening there. That and OSR stuff, which certainly 4e is the antithesis of.
MoutonRustique
Explorer
Good to know!
On my end, I keep fiddling around in circles and never writing anything down in a coherent fashion (post-its, loose half-pages, etc.) so I'm... somewhere... if I ever find out where I'll let you know.
Also, and I really should just get back into programming for this : if there was a way to get a decent parser and my monster files in a format I could fiddle with en mass- oh! what a thing of beauty that would be! Alas! I am currently having a hard time doing very, very basic stuff with google sheets : i.e. I'm not anywhere close to where I'd need to be and I know I should look at the step in front and not at the mountain looming... but... that mountain is looming pretty damned hard over here!
Just in case:
- I'm looking to have equipment wear/breakage be a thing (especially weapons, armour and shields). As is inevitable, I'm running into a lot of problems... If you've ever seen something that makes sense, feel free to point me towards it.
- I'm also looking into armour as damage mitigation/reduction. Same situation as above.
Well, now we reach the phase of the discussion that this thread has reached many times before in its past incarnations (The Eternal Thread, was it first named Erekose?). What's a 'clone'. I mean how far does it have to be from 4e to be a clone, because a game like what you are talking about is almost as far from 4e as 13a is. If that's a clone then the question has been answered.
No, it isn't actually that far away from 4e. It can behave almost identically to 4e from levels 1-20, because the actual math is 4e math cleaned up. As an example, a 5th level PC in such a clone would be considered a 10th level PC with Improved Defenses/Versatile Expertise in terms of 4e math.
You could drop him into a 10th level 4e campaign and would only need to make a couple of minor adjustments to make sure bad things didn't happen - and those would mainly be about enforcing the rules of the clone where appropriate - he wouldn't have Versatile Expertise, but at the same time, wouldn't be able to benefit from feat bonuses if he then took Versatile Expertise.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, my 'hack' game uses a 20 level progression with 4e-like math, and while its not exactly HARD to convert things the range of modifiers is smaller and etc, so pretty much every number changes. Lots of things ARE the same, but PCs don't just convert really cleanly. You can get a pretty close approximation with a little bit of sliding numbers around, but...
Of course I also did a number of other things in order to create a bit more dynamic system and do some things that I wanted to get into. It really is NOT 4e anymore, and I think I'm likely to diverge even further over time. I've been thinking about the whole d20 mechanic. The Strike! guys may be a little extreme with their d6, but I've got some other ideas...
