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

[DarkCrisis]

In fairness to Salvatore (I’ve never read anything by Greenwood, so can’t comment on him), it did result in the Companions, which is my favorite book of his.

It’s so somber and sad and yet joyous all at the same time.

Greenwood invented Faerun so I’m sure it hurt him most of all.

 

[Oofta]

At-will SPELLS, yes. Not at-wills.

Hour-long short rests.

You'll have to point me to the skill challenge rules. I had been under the impression those were entirely excised, based on the number of folks who gleefully celebrate their absolute deletion.

BM maneuvers are a joke and always have been. Sadly, burying an actual mark (albeit with an utterly trash punishment, seriously, Str mod per day??) in a subclass otherwise exclusively bound to mounted combat...in a system like 5e...just xoesnr cut it. But this would be a great example of taking a good idea, hobbling it intentionally, and hiding it away so it can't offend the delicate sensibilities of folks gatekeeping what playstyles are allowed in the so-called "big tent."

And, being perfectly honest? You easily could have fooled me on the "trying to be complimentary" front. It sounded like a string of backhanded compliments.

I can't help it if you somehow think "I think 4E had some good ideas, some of which were used to inspire features in several games, including 5E" is derogatory. Between anybody saying anything about 4E that's not outright praise meaning you consider it an insult to anyone who liked the game and your scapegoating reasons why 4E was not as successful as 5E, I'm done here.

 

[Belen]

4e was not a tabletop MMO, but the fact you must resort to such tired, false edition war rhetoric tells me there is nothing further worth discussing with you.

That is exactly how I perceived it. I was running a large SWTOR guild during the time of 4e and I often found it difficult to see a difference between a raid party and a 4e D&D party.

I was also a WOTC rep for years and I used to run the mini-game at game stores to players.

To me, 4e only felt like an MMO or tactical mini game.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I definitely get what you're saying here. In the 4e MM, to use an example, the efreet has a variety of combat abilities - but pretty much nothing else. The flavor text says that efreet hate servitude but are often called upon by mortals to do favors. OK, great. That's similar to other editions. But they're called on by mortals to do... what? Given how they're statted up, apparently beat people up?
Contrast with AD&D, 3e, and even 5e where the efreet have other things they can do that aren't focused on combat. And the efreet isn't the only critter affected this way.

And I found the same with much of the adventuring rules that are out there compared to AD&D, 3e, and 5e. The 4e ones always seem more fixated on encounter-level involvement than other editions. But that's 4e's particular myopia - it's THE edition focused most tightly on providing a particular combat encounter experience.

And, ultimately, another reason Rob Heinsoo's analysis about the disapproval aimed at 4e falls short.

I think they were overcompensating for earlier edition stat block bloat. I think there were two things they wanted to do with stat blocks. a) Make them smaller, and b) Make them less reliant on external info (like spells listed separately).

I remember thinking that the presentation of monsters in the monster manual was a bit weird, but it was such a long time since I read those.

 

[Clint_L]

I definitely get what you're saying here. In the 4e MM, to use an example, the efreet has a variety of combat abilities - but pretty much nothing else. The flavor text says that efreet hate servitude but are often called upon by mortals to do favors. OK, great. That's similar to other editions. But they're called on by mortals to do... what? Given how they're statted up, apparently beat people up?
Contrast with AD&D, 3e, and even 5e where the efreet have other things they can do that aren't focused on combat. And the efreet isn't the only critter affected this way.

And I found the same with much of the adventuring rules that are out there compared to AD&D, 3e, and 5e. The 4e ones always seem more fixated on encounter-level involvement than other editions. But that's 4e's particular myopia - it's THE edition focused most tightly on providing a particular combat encounter experience.

And, ultimately, another reason Rob Heinsoo's analysis about the disapproval aimed at 4e falls short.

For me, this is another way that 4e achieved what it set out to do, which was to create a TTRPG experience somewhat similar to an MMORPG experience. In an MMORPG the monster encounters are the whole point of the game. Everything that you do is about improving your character's ability to succeed in the big boss fight. More specifically, the raid encounter. And those fights have various stages, so you have to plan your cooldowns (on use powers, in 4e terms) accordingly, and so on.

I think that 4e was broadly successful in creating a game that captured some of that feeling. But that's not D&D is, for me. For me, D&D is a much more story-driven game. In our last three sessions at school, there has been exactly ONE combat encounter - there was potential for others, but the players found interesting solutions. And they have been having a great time.

You could do that in 4e, but it felt like the point of the game was to prepare for set piece battles. Very much like an MMORPG. But I was already playing World of Warcraft. I wasn't looking for that experience at my TTRPG.

I'm sure the setting changes were a big problem for some folks. They were not even a consideration for me.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

That's a good point I'd never quite verbalized before. You can see this focus just in the fact that 4e has Encounter based recharge powers and 5e has Short Rest based recharge powers. We can quibble over the ideal length of a Short Rest, or point out that they're functionally fairly similar to each other, but the difference in how the two measure time is telling.

Pathfinder 2E also avoids having things based on an encounter and instead has a limited resource, focus points, that recover after a short rest. I think this points to that part of the terminology in 4E being quite bad (since PF2 feels much 4E inspired in execution).

It feels arbitrary to say that this or that thing recovers after a battle, while it's much less arbitrary if you say that it recovers after a short rest.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I tried. Over a year of trying. Discord, forums, VTTs, Reddit. I tried.

This "unprecedented access and availability" got me diddly-squat.

I know. You've mentioned it before. And I have no answer as to why you can't anyone to play 4E with you.

I don't remember if you've mentioned it specifically in the past, but have you been offering to DM, or just been looking to play? My gut would tell me that offering to DM would be more likely to generate player interest so that you could actually get a 4E game onto the table (or online)... but maybe that hasn't worked out for you either? I take it on faith you've done all you can to generate something in the 4E sphere, but unfortunately the circles you've been looking in have come up empty and I have no explanation why that could be.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm very curious if the idea of changing only the rules and not the setting would have made 4E more palatable to D&D fans. It seems to have worked for Pathfinder 2E, which changed the rules drastically but kept the setting largely the same.

Data point of one, but:

I didn't care for the rules and mechanics of 4E. But for all of its faults, 4th Edition had a really great setting and some really good lore. If Nentir Vale/Points of Light ever gets adapted to 5E (I know, I know), I'd be one of the first to buy it.

 

[MwaO]

I know. You've mentioned it before. And I have no answer as to why you can't anyone to play 4E with you.

I don't remember if you've mentioned it specifically in the past, but have you been offering to DM, or just been looking to play? My gut would tell me that offering to DM would be more likely to generate player interest so that you could actually get a 4E game onto the table (or online)... but maybe that hasn't worked out for you either? I take it on faith you've done all you can to generate something in the 4E sphere, but unfortunately the circles you've been looking in have come up empty and I have no explanation why that could be.

The 4e discord usually, if someone offers to DM a campaign, fills within a small number of hours.

 

[DEFCON 1]

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.

This has exactly been my main complaint about most of the online Dungeon magazine adventures for the first couple years of the 4E game. As you say... quite a number of these adventures were nothing more than just three maps of encounter battles right in a row that you were expected to just march through with the barest of reasons to get to the first battle and even more tenuous reasons to continue forward.

There were some adventures that actually had plot and story to them... Last Breaths of Ashenport being my absolute favorite one released for 4E-- but then again I think I read that this was actually an adventure from a previous edition that they turned into a 4E one, so it's not surprising why it works... but most of them do not.