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

[MichaelSomething]

I don't doubt this is true, but I've read anecdotes of folks who were literally told they couldn't use combat powers like spells outside of combat in 4e. This sort of problem isn't unique, of course (I still bitterly remember the PF Society GM who refused to let me throw dirt in someone's face because I didn't have the right feat)... but it still indicates that if the 4e designers actively wanted DMs and players to do this, they needed to be louder about it.

Honestly, they needed sections in both the PHB and DMG explaining how to improvise actions. Will the 2024 books have sections like that?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Second point, two of the people heavily involved in the Setting changes (Jamea Wyaty and Chris Perkins) not only wrote the 2014 DMG, but are currently trying the ones writing the 2024 DMG, so clearly nobody with access to the data at Has ro agrees with Heinsoo about where this went wrong.

That's a terrible argument. You're saying that the reason that 4E "failed" was not because of changes to the setting, because if the setting caused it to fail that would be blamed on the writers, and the writers were hired to write the setting stuff to 5E.

That makes no sense, because it assumes that everything about the design of the setting falls on the writers of the setting material.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Yeah, I didn’t get far enough into it to see the lore changes. The layout, the presentation, the daily, at-will, encounter powers etc didn’t sit right with me. It just looked like a different game and one that felt drained of the things I liked about D&D.

I can't help but miss the concise way game mechanics were displayed in 4E. They felt more like they were designed to be used in play without slowing the game down to parse the rules text.

For example, compare the official write-up of Divine Sense and the 4E-inspired way I abbreviated it on my newest PC's character sheet:

The presence of strong evil registers on your senses like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like heavenly music in your ears. As an action, you can open your awareness to detect such forces. Until the end of your next turn, you know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that is not behind total cover. You know the type (celestial, fiend, or undead) of any being whose presence you sense, but not its identity (the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance). Within the same radius, you also detect the presence of any place or object that has been consecrated or desecrated, as with the Hallow spell.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier. When you finish a long rest, you regain all expended uses.

Divine Sense (4/LR)

• Action
• 60 foot radius
• Until EoNT
• Detect location and creature type of celestials, fiends, or undead not behind cover.
• Detect any consecrated or desecrated places or objects, such as those effected by Hallow.

 

[overgeeked]

I can't help but miss the concise way game mechanics were displayed in 4E. They felt more like they were designed to be used in play without slowing the game down to parse the rules text.

For example, compare the official write-up of Divine Sense and the 4E-inspired way I abbreviated it on my newest PC's character sheet:

Right? Imagine that. The rules for a game being written as if they were, in fact, rules for a game.

 

[TiQuinn]

I can't help but miss the concise way game mechanics were displayed in 4E. They felt more like they were designed to be used in play without slowing the game down to parse the rules text.

For example, compare the official write-up of Divine Sense and the 4E-inspired way I abbreviated it on my newest PC's character sheet:

I can see the benefit but I also feel like something is lost. It feels like code without presentation.

 

[Parmandur]

That's a terrible argument. You're saying that the reason that 4E "failed" was not because of changes to the setting, because if the setting caused it to fail that would be blamed on the writers, and the writers were hired to write the setting stuff to 5E.

That makes no sense, because it assumes that everything about the design of the setting falls on the writers of the setting material.

Not at all, Heinsoo is the one trying to make the case thst the rules weren't the problem, when the Settong material in question is quite popular with modern D&D rules and in D&D media. That means the Setting stuff was not the hangup for people.

Though by the way it's not just the setting stuff Perkins and Wyatt are doing now, or for the past decade.

 

[Oofta]

Some people simply didn't care for the way the game was structured. But when people continue to post about how people didn't care for the game simply got it wrong, or never gave it a chance, it's really, really hard not to get into edition wars.

I can enumerate several things I ultimately didn't like about 4E, but there's no point. The only thing pertinent to the thread an Rob's comments are that the changes to FR lore was not a significant contributing factor based on discussions with the dozens of people I played with.

 

[TiQuinn]

Some people simply didn't care for the way the game was structured. But when people continue to post about how people didn't care for the game simply got it wrong, or never gave it a chance, it's really, really hard not to get into edition wars.

I can enumerate several things I ultimately didn't like about 4E, but there's no point. The only thing pertinent to the thread a Rob's comments are that the changes to FR lore was not a significant contributing factor based on discussions with the dozens of people I played with.

From everything I’ve understood, a lot of 4e rules have been adopted into other systems so from a certain standpoint, they made a big impact. I’m guessing 13th Age has a lot of 4e design. I know Lancer does as well, and I’m betting the MCDM game will too. So it’s not like proponents of the system don’t have 4e inspired alternatives.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

By "shutdown competition", do you mean "allow to do everything competition did before, plus allow them to use the OGL and play in the D&D pool"?

If it stifled anything, it was by giving 3pp more options, including an attractive one they wouldn't have had such easy access to before. Nothing but nothing was forced to shutdown any non-OGL products by the OGL.

On top of that, it allowed for settings Wotc ignored for a while to persist. Say I really liked Vampires with age categories from a certain horror setting, which are also amusingly self-referential seeing who wrote those rules. Plus AEG. Tome of Horror.
Plus stuff like Midnight that flipped 3ed on its head.

More importantly, I think that just because the OGL supported games that competed with 4e, one should not feel compelled to conclude at all costs it was a negative even when all evidence points to the contrary.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

I'm lot 100% sure what you mean by that, but I really liked the tone and stole style of the 4E preview books.

I wish more of that aesthetic had made it into later 4E products.

The whole 4e campaign as a whole was borderline condescending. The atmosphere online back then didn't help, but that's not on the designers or wotc in general. But better to do not go there.