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

[Alzrius]

There was a real sense in playtesting, IME, that everything that remotely looked, sniffed, or sounded like 4e had to be discarded regardless of their merits.

Well, yeah. In my local RPG community, 5E was referred to as "D&D: the Apology" when it first came out. There's a reason for that.

 

[Undrave]

That sounds like a convenient strawman tho.

Yes, but it's my bit and I'm sticking to it. Don't ever take it personally.

There was a lot of gnashing of teeth over the 4E wizard. I almost always play wizards, and I played a ton of 4E. Never played a wizard there because I had so much fun with the martial. 5E? I play all spellcasting characters.

I never played a Controller in 4e but kinda wish I tried at least once. I played multiple Clerics, played a Warlord, a Paladin, an Avenger, a Warlock, a Bard. I should have finished the Divine classes and played an Invoker.

In 5e I played Clerics and a Druid and they bored me to tears. My Clerics always ended up with the same spells because they were clearly the bests ones, and my Shepperd Druid was just TOO GOOD that I felt like I did all the cool stuff and got tired of doing the same thing over and over again. You can only send 8 wolves into battle so many times before it gets repetitive.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So it is a wotc problem, not a democracy/userbase one? Not trying to put words in your mouth, just to understand this passage.

The "no solution exists because the voting blocs conflict" problem is inherent and specific to democracy. Other forms of decision-making have their own faults (e.g. absolute autocracy is extremely sensitive to a leader being just genuinely insane, foolish, or blind to the consequences of their choices; consider Nero), but democracy is special in that it can genuinely produce irrational results despite every participant having a rational position.

My point is that the collective decision is foolish, even stupid, despite no individual person needing to be in any way bad or wrong. I do not need to invoke ideas like traditionalism or nostalgia, even though those things are serious albatrosses around D&D's neck. I don't even need to invoke the "people want X, but they refuse to pay any of the costs necessary to get X" problem, even though that is a problem.

All I need is the plain and simple fact, demonstrated handily with an actual known problem WotC faces, that irrational decision making can result purely from conflicting desires across different factions within a group of people. Even when you demand absolutely rational voters (a lovely but entirely false expectation), you can still get voting results that are logically impossible.

 

[overgeeked]

Or maybe people just hated that the game had balance between classes as a design goal...


I mean, they also made the Wizard weaker. Heinsoo even said he had to fight his own team who wanted the Wizard to be the strongest class...

It’s wild how willfully blind people choose to be. Basic math shows the wizard is the most powerful. Basic system knowledge shows the wizard is the most powerful. The designers of the game flat-out say the wizard is the most powerful. And yet people still refuse to acknowledge it. So weird. They must be getting something out of the charade. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep it up.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They haven't? In addition I don't need to specifically memorize a spell for wizards, we've gotten casting spells at higher level, bonus action spells including healing at a distance, at will spells, rituals, consolidated spell lists. But other than that, no change at all.

It may not be the changes you desire or enough change, but it has changed over the years.

Again, these are in no way meaningful changes to the severe gamist nature of Vancian spellcasting and the massive, nigh-insoluble balance problems this specific method induces.

 

[Minigiant]

Sometimes is a matter of finding the sweet spot. As an example I find 5e wands brilliant (I literally imported them in my 3.PF homebrew) while the new Concentration is too harsh for my taste. The fact that finding this sweet spot is difficult doesn't mean that most of the criticism is in bad faith or that the baby must be thrown with the bathwater (the 4ed solution).

The issue is that D&D is so bigg and based on too many inspirations that there is no sweet spot.

We are too diverse. All game designers can do is make a decision and accept that some will hate it.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

The "no solution exists because the voting blocs conflict" problem is inherent and specific to democracy. Other forms of decision-making have their own faults (e.g. absolute autocracy is extremely sensitive to a leader being just genuinely insane, foolish, or blind to the consequences of their choices; consider Nero), but democracy is special in that it can genuinely produce irrational results despite every participant having a rational position.

My point is that the collective decision is foolish, even stupid, despite no individual person needing to be in any way bad or wrong. I do not need to invoke ideas like traditionalism or nostalgia, even though those things are serious albatrosses around D&D's neck. I don't even need to invoke the "people want X, but they refuse to pay any of the costs necessary to get X" problem, even though that is a problem.

All I need is the plain and simple fact, demonstrated handily with an actual known problem WotC faces, that irrational decision making can result purely from conflicting desires across different factions within a group of people. Even when you demand absolutely rational voters (a lovely but entirely false expectation), you can still get voting results that are logically impossible.

I don't know man, this sounds more like an excuse and that could also be used to explain 4e in the same way - the collective whining led to 4e or something.
To me is more appropriate to describe the issues with a simple failure to sit down and appropriately design stuff on part of the people that are paid to do so. See above, again, my wand example.
Which also addresses your answer to Oofta. The issue is not Vancian, is how spells are written. Unless you just want Vancian out and you don't accept any other explanation for any issue with magic. In that case, discussion becomes pointless.

 

[Aldarc]

No one asks for verbatim copies. I certainly don't, I've said as much to you personally multiple times over the years.

Nearly every single thing so-called "copied" from 4e was butchered beyond recognition, or pretended to be something entirely new ("what I like to call 'passive perception'"), or actively made to work the opposite way that 4e did. E.g. rituals; in 4e they were accessible to anyone and could do a huge amount of cool things totally separate from combat concerns, with all sorts of potential costs and benefits. In 5e, they're literally just a way to make already powerful spellcasters even more powerful, because now they don't even need to expend spell slots to warp reality to their needs, they just need ten minutes, and by far the only people who should ever consider it are actual spellcasters.

Yeah, I would not necessarily want a carbon-copy of 4e. Okay, maybe I would like that, but more as an option for people who liked 4e as-is to play a polished version of the game, much the same as people who love B/X have OSE as a polished version of the game. I would potentially want something between 4e and 5e. I would also want to see the version that Monte Cook was cooking. I heard that it delivered modularity, and it also got love from players who also loved 4e.

It’s wild how willfully blind people choose to be. Basic math shows the wizard is the most powerful. Basic system knowledge shows the wizard is the most powerful. The designers of the game flat-out say the wizard is the most powerful. And yet people still refuse to acknowledge it. So weird. They must be getting something out of the charade. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep it up.

Plausible deniability.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't know man, this sounds more like an excuse and that could also be used to explain 4e in the same way - the collective whining led to 4e or something.
To me is more appropriate to describe the issues with a simple failure to sit down and appropriately design stuff on part of the people that are paid to do so. See above, again, my wand example.

Yes, it does explain (to some extent) 4e.

You can pretend to please people, while fixing nothing. Or you can fix things, and necessarily piss some people off. Pick your poison.

When coupled with the other, actually irrational positions (like the need for Wizards to always be the best class in the game, as Heinsoo himself reported following 4e's launch), explosive responses are guaranteed.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

Yes, but it's my bit and I'm sticking to it. Don't ever take it personally.

If it makes you feel better go for it. But doesn't remotely describe the reality. As an example, people that missed 3e magic also missed magic "problems" like dead or impeded or wild magic. It added to diversity and charme even if it decreased the power of the spellcasters.