D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[Belen]

Ironically they made a decent 3.75 with Star Wars Saga Edition.

Theu coukd ha Edition used that engine to power 4E but looking like 3.5.

Just excise or rewrite the problem spells a'la 5E. Don't blow up FR more lije 2E to 3.0 change.

There's your fixed 3.5.

THANK YOU!

Saga was great. They could have done this to 3.5 and it would have been excellent.

 

[Belen]

In fairness, the way players at the time responded, their condescension wasn't unwarranted. People did, in fact, cheer at the announced removal of Vancian spellcasting at one point.

"We've moved on from these things that cause problems and trip up the offered gameplay experience" isn't a snooty message when your players cheer on the "sacred barbecue."

I disagree. There was a subset that cheered. They went on to like 4e. The debate on ENWorld was fierce as the time and a huge number of people were upset even before 4e launched.

 

[Belen]

Well, you played 3.5, which was just as much of a miniatures game as 4E was. Large numbers of 3.5 tables used miniatures and grids all the time. The only difference was that 3.5 made it easier to also play it Theater of the Mind style than 4E did if that was what someone wanted.

True.

I burned out on 3.5/PF1e to the point where I never used maps and minis now. I grew to realize that 3.0 was the better version of third edition as it was closer to D&D and 2e. This is why I enjoy 5e.

 

[Retreater]

Before I continue with this post, I want to say that I consider myself a 4E apologist. I ran it for years at D&D Encounters to promote it to new players at my FLGS. I have been running a 4E campaign for 6 months (with mixed results, but some of my players are really enjoying it.) But it is after running this 4E campaign for 6 months that's finally given me the perspective I need.

So I think 4E is a fine game. It's fairly well balanced. The rules are sensible and logical.

To me, the biggest difference is the design focus. Whereas the first few editions of D&D were focused on dungeon exploration, second edition was focused on campaign design, and third edition was focused on character design - 4E had a narrow focus on encounter design. You're going to go through a string of thematic battles. In the modules, they would have a two-page spread showing a battlemap made from crude tiles (sold separately) - with the overall dungeon maps being a simple flowchart from battle to battle.

There was no real sense of exploration or discovery, no game outside the battles. [I mean, sure you had a couple pages that discussed the Skill Challenge so you could gloss over exploration challenges. And you had rituals - which pretty much no one used, but if they did, it was to help you in future battles.]

If this had been only a D&D Miniatures or skirmish game (like Frostgrave or Warcry) - or even a dungeon crawler boardgame (like Descent or Gloomhaven) - it may have been more successful. Why? Because in those games the factions are roughly even to present a challenge. In D&D 4E, it's a miniature skirmish game where one side (the heroes) is expected to win 99.9% of the time.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, you played 3.5, which was just as much of a miniatures game as 4E was. Large numbers of 3.5 tables used miniatures and grids all the time. The only difference was that 3.5 made it easier to also play it Theater of the Mind style than 4E did if that was what someone wanted.

We only used minis for literally one session of 3.5 playijg it fir years: the rest of the time was theatre of the mind. 4E was a hard break experientially because of that.

 

[TiQuinn]

Some people are okay with using work-arounds (for Vancian casting, thematic class description, etc.) and others aren't. And if you have too many of the latter, then the game eventually will find itself changing to make more people satisfied later on.

Which is why I'm cool with versions of the game iterating and changing and sometimes becoming different games. 5e doesn't invalidate 2e to me, they're just different games. At the end of the day, I think 5e got the flexibility right as opposed to 4e that while groundbreaking (it should've been a different game entirely) ultimately wasn't what people wanted out of D&D.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Which is why I'm cool with versions of the game iterating and changing and sometimes becoming different games. 5e doesn't invalidate 2e to me, they're just different games. At the end of the day, I think 5e got the flexibility right as opposed to 4e that while groundbreaking (it should've been a different game entirely) ultimately wasn't what people wanted out of D&D.

Absolutely. And it's why I hold no ill-will to anyone who chose not to play 4E. I played it, I enjoyed it, that's all that mattered to me. If others didn't like it, no harm no foul on my end. And if they came back to playing 5E... then that's cool too.

At the same time I also can empathize with those players who want to still play a previous edition because they preferred it to what we currently have for D&D, but just can't find the players for it because it isn't "current". The 4E players right now seem to have the most difficult time of it (if what we see on the boards here is any indication.) But we do live in a time of unprescedented access and availability to an entire playerbase, so I'd like to think that there are 4E games out there to be run and played on portals like Foundry, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds etc. Sure, it might take a lot of doing on someone's part to actually type in and import most of the 4E ruleset needs into the game (since none of these portals have a 4E ruleset they can purchase from WotC to have online)... but if it's really that desired, at some point someone needs to jump in the pool and do it (for themselves if nothing else.)

 

[SteveC]

would they have done so if 4e had continued using the OGL?

There is no way to know for certain, but I suspect yes. I remember talking with Paizo people at Gen Con on the subject and they absolutely wanted to continue working with WotC. Pathfinder came out as a response to a need to keep the company alive. Without it, Paizo probably wouldn't be around.

When the edition launched, there was (and this is my opinion, coming as a 4E supporter) a tremendous amount of hubris about what WotC could do with it. Almost none of what they wanted to do panned out.

I am truly sad about the game that 4E could have been with OGL support but wasn't. And if you think about it, the parallels with the OGL crisis of last year could have had disastrous results along the same lines.

 

[billd91]

There is no way to know for certain, but I suspect yes. I remember talking with Paizo people at Gen Con on the subject and they absolutely wanted to continue working with WotC. Pathfinder came out as a response to a need to keep the company alive. Without it, Paizo probably wouldn't be around.

When the edition launched, there was (and this is my opinion, coming as a 4E supporter) a tremendous amount of hubris about what WotC could do with it. Almost none of what they wanted to do panned out.

Yeah, things definitely didn't pan out, and while some of them were impossible to anticipate (like the murder-suicide that ended their ambitions in the VTT for 4e), the licensing issue (GSL's delay and then bad terms) was a total bungle. That bungle cost WotC some significant 3rd party companies like Paizo, Green Ronin, and Necromancer Games and hampered their 3rd party product ecosystem at launch.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

NEVER nuke the setting.

nods vigorously in Traveller