WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[Ruin Explorer]

It was just sooo unnecessary. And it harmed the reputation of the edition as much or even more than the mechanics did.

It was indeed unnecessary, though, frankly, the FR could easily stand having Dragonborn added - but they should have come through a portral or arrived in a flying fortress or something. Not just deleted several parts of the FR for nebulous reasons.

However the second claim is only half-true. Yes, it's true that the actual, genuine, real, in-the-game mechanics of 4E didn't do it significant reputational harm, but misunderstandings about them, or factually inaccurate but meme-y ideas about them did it quite a lot of reputational damage (as did the refusal of people to accept the facts). The biggest damage though was done by the one-two punch of the initial marketing, which was so far beyond merely "tone-deaf" as to be into the realms of "accidental Simpsons-style parody" and insulting to just about everyone (including people who wanted what 4E was doing!), and getting rid of the OGL, which was a demented slap in the face to the 3PPs who not only helped 3.XE to prosper, but also had become kind of a big deal (particularly Paizo).

So I guess I'm saying, yeah the FR changes didn't help, but that's a very low bar you have there. They weren't a major part of the problem.

On topic, Wyatt being back seems like generally a good thing, given his previous work.

 

[Aldarc]

and getting rid of the OGL, which was a demented slap in the face to the 3PPs who not only helped 3.XE to prosper, but also had become kind of a big deal (particularly Paizo).

And it also mostly killed chances of 4e retro-clones or 3pp to make a more polished version of the game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And it also mostly killed chances of 4e retro-clones or 3pp to make a more polished version of the game.

Yeah that was particularly sad. I don't think I'll ever understand what they thought they were pulling with effectively getting rid of the SRD/OGL. What did they think was going to happen by bringing in a vastly more restrictive approach? The SRD was insane, basically just a list of words and some formatting, with no actual rules material (completely unlike 3E and 5E).

It was surely obvious that this change, plus the GSL nonsense would create big problems for 3PPs, and not just discourage them from engaging with 4E, but actively make it difficult for them to do so (given you couldn't even include MM statblocks in a game that was pretty serious about statblocks), even if they wanted to. That that, combined with the total incompatibility with all of their previous products, which was perhaps unavoidable, but a further issue, would cause a big backlash from consumers and 3PPs alike?

I don't think we've ever heard any current or ex-WotC staffers talk about the "why" of these decisions in general (correct me if I'm wrong!). Reading between the lines you can perhaps see they wanted people to use a digital product that didn't initially exist (and wasn't super-viable technologically at the time), by forcing companies to just use names of monsters, abilities, etc. - but that's so devaluing to their products - and you can imagine that they were jealous that some 3PPs were making a fair bit of money by, quite frankly, far better serving the adventure/campaign market than WotC themselves were. But that doesn't seem like enough. I guess we may never know, beyond that it was yet another bizarre mistake.

I remember at the time I was kind of mad about Pathfinder and thought it was a slightly cheap move by Paizo, but frankly, in retrospect, they did the right thing, and WotC had it coming (to be clear though I was always critical of the GSL/SRD stuff). Pity it had to happen to 4E. I suspect the same game, with the same mechanics and writing, but different marketing (including WotC people avoiding ill-advised comparisons!), and a proper OGL/SRD could have been extremely successful. Maybe not 3E successful, but better than it did. Had they also been realistic about technology and software, and slightly changed the game because of that, it could have been more successful still.

 

[Aldarc]

I remember at the time I was kind of mad about Pathfinder and thought it was a slightly cheap move by Paizo, but frankly, in retrospect, they did the right thing, and WotC had it coming. Pity it had to happen to 4E. I suspect the same game, with the same mechanics and writing, but different marketing (including WotC people avoiding ill-advised comparisons!), and a proper OGL/SRD could have been extremely successful. Maybe not 3E successful, but better than it did. Had they also been realistic about technology and software, and slightly changed the game because of that, it could have been more successful still.

It also needed about 1-2 years more of playtesting, possibly some of that being public because it also sounds from the designers that the design of the game was also somewhat rushed and the final product was not necessarily what they wanted from the game either.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It also needed about 1-2 years more of playtesting, possibly some of that being public because it also sounds from the designers that the design of the game was also somewhat rushed and the final product was not necessarily what they wanted from the game either.

I dunno if it needed quite that long, it's not a videogame and even those don't usually need 1-2 years of actual playtesting - I suspect six months would have done it, in terms of creating more "essentials"-like classes - TT RPG development is pretty rapid, but yeah later comments from the designers show they hadn't got as far with the design as they'd wanted to. Thus it's the rare TT RPG example of "kicked out the door" (albeit at least it was complete, just not where they wanted it to be). As an aside, I always feel like "shoved on stage" would be a better metaphor than kicked out the door for both computer games and other media examples - "kicked out the door" implies forgetting about something but that's rarely the case with games released before their time (at least in the last decade).

I mean the wishlist though is probably:

1) Productive rather the actively counter-productive marketing
2) OGL and a proper SRD
2a) Friendly/inclusionary attitude rather than adversarial/exclusionary attitude to 3PPs
3) Less of a push to digital
4) Give the game more time to develop before releasing it

And you know what? They seemed to learn almost all those lessons except 4, with 5E. 5E also has a "kicked out the door" vibe to some of the design elements. We know a lot more about the testing and stuff, but some bits of it's design feel even more unfinished than 4th felt. I'm looking at you particularly Hit Dice...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Pathfinder didn't need to do much in the way of changes, the things that were different from what I remember was Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense, floating ability score bonuses for Half-Orcs and Half-Elves, Wizards and Sorcerers getting d6 hit dice, Bards and Rogues getting d8 hit dice and some spell changes. It was really just a slight refinement of 3.5 rules.

 

[darjr]

Pathfinder didn't need to do much in the way of changes, the things that were different from what I remember was Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense, floating ability score bonuses for Half-Orcs and Half-Elves, Wizards and Sorcerers getting d6 hit dice, Bards and Rogues getting d8 hit dice and some spell changes. It was really just a slight refinement of 3.5 rules.

Also the skill system was MUCH easier to deal with. And fighters had a feat at every level (or ami mis remembering?) Genius really. Simple but powerful changes.

 

[TwoSix]

Pathfinder didn't need to do much in the way of changes, the things that were different from what I remember was Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense, floating ability score bonuses for Half-Orcs and Half-Elves, Wizards and Sorcerers getting d6 hit dice, Bards and Rogues getting d8 hit dice and some spell changes. It was really just a slight refinement of 3.5 rules.

Eliminating cross-class skill ranks was also a non-trivial change, and changing the feat progression from every 3rd level to every odd level.

The really profound change was moving away from PrC bloat and towards archetypes, but I think that didn't start happening until the APG.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It was indeed unnecessary, though, frankly, the FR could easily stand having Dragonborn added - but they should have come through a portral or arrived in a flying fortress or something. Not just deleted several parts of the FR for nebulous reasons.

However the second claim is only half-true. Yes, it's true that the actual, genuine, real, in-the-game mechanics of 4E didn't do it significant reputational harm, but misunderstandings about them, or factually inaccurate but meme-y ideas about them did it quite a lot of reputational damage (as did the refusal of people to accept the facts). The biggest damage though was done by the one-two punch of the initial marketing, which was so far beyond merely "tone-deaf" as to be into the realms of "accidental Simpsons-style parody" and insulting to just about everyone (including people who wanted what 4E was doing!), and getting rid of the OGL, which was a demented slap in the face to the 3PPs who not only helped 3.XE to prosper, but also had become kind of a big deal (particularly Paizo).

So I guess I'm saying, yeah the FR changes didn't help, but that's a very low bar you have there. They weren't a major part of the problem.

Yeah, I meant that with a bit of hyperbole, as "one of the sad things" (by which I meant "unfortunate mistakes"). You do an excellent job of pointing out some of the others, all absolutely true.

Yeah that was particularly sad. I don't think I'll ever understand what they thought they were pulling with effectively getting rid of the SRD/OGL. What did they think was going to happen by bringing in a vastly more restrictive approach? The SRD was insane, basically just a list of words and some formatting, with no actual rules material (completely unlike 3E and 5E).

I think it was an overreaction to Paizo making adventures that were more popular than WotC's were. Unfortunately, it caused the effect that it was trying to prevent. The 3e SRD made it possible for competitors to out perform them with their own IP - so they toasted it, and forced their once-ally, now-competitor to go into the business of out performing them with their own IP. It was very foolish.

3) Less of a push to digital

In the very least, if they were going to push so hard to digital, they should have had the digital tools ready to do it. They pushed, but they never really delivered.

 

[Aldarc]

In the very least, if they were going to push so hard to digital, they should have had the digital tools ready to do it. They pushed, but they never really delivered.

...because of pretty dark behind-the-scenes reasons.