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

[TiQuinn]

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.

Was that the whole Gleemax thing? I remember it a bit from the forums.

 

[Kurotowa]

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.

The imprecision is a feature, not a bug, for a lot of people. It allows for creative uses of features and spells instead of them only and exactly doing a specific thing. There's also the fact that 4e aggressively removed anything that couldn't easily be defined by its technical terms. No free form illusions, Suggestion being nothing more than substituting a different skill for a check, very few out of combat features, that sort of thing.

 

[Vael]

I quite liked 4e. While I had enjoyed 3.5 ... as a player, the first time behind the DM screen was a disaster and only when 4e rolled around did I give it another try. And, tbh, it did a lot of things really great. Minions, monster roles, and easy to just eyeball encounter math made it a breeze to run. And the combat engine sang, felt easy to run complicated and interesting combat encounters. Unfortunately, monster math initially was off base, leading to some slog fests, but it was corrected for and I started to regularly play in their Encounters organized play system from the release of Dark Sun forward. Even as a player, I liked that team work was encouraged and that there were fewer trap options.

 

[Clint_L]

For me, the rules were the problem. I don't care about the setting. The game felt like it was trying to be a MMORPG, not D&D. Some folks love it, and good on them, but it is not for me. It does not feel like D&D to me. Period.

Of course the guy leading the rules changes is going to blame it on the setting.

 

[mamba]

The OGL allowed for the entire RPG market to flourish because it let newcomers hitch their metaphorical wagon to the big boys (i.e. WotC) long enough to establish themselves, after which they could break away and start making new games that they probably wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

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

 

[I'm A Banana]

Rob credits the negative reaction to 4E being because it changed both the rules and the setting, saying that it might have been better received if the setting stayed the same while the rules changed.

I think there's some nuance in this.

One of 4e's problems was definitely that it changed the rules and the setting...and then still called itself D&D. One of the loud complaints (that I don't personally agree with, but saw a lot of) is that this game wasn't the D&D that people wanted and expected and desired. It was something else. Something alien. Something not "for" people who already liked D&D and just wanted a better D&D experience. The old "If they wanted to make a new game, they should've done that, and left D&D alone!" argument.

I don't think keeping the setting the same would've solved that problem. That problem is also a rules problem. If it doesn't "feel like D&D," in the play of the thing, then we still have the problem.

That particular problem grew out of something like this:

problems with D&D that 4E should be designed to fix

What they came up with to fix didn't line up with what most people thought D&D's actual problems were. If Noonan was the only person coming up with this, then Noonan got it wrong in a big way. If this was the genesis of a new edition, it's not surprising that the edition that grew out of this was divisive. Not everyone agreed with Noonan on the problems that 4e needed to fix, or how 4e fixed them.

I think 5e has learned both of these lessons reasonably well.

First, that a good version of Dungeons & Dragons is not the same thing as a good version of a fantasy TTRPG. The fact that it is D&D carries with it certain ideas and desires that need to be met by the designers that constrain the design in various ways. If you're selling to D&D fans, those fans need to see the game you're making as D&D.

Second, they're committed to getting feedback on their intended design paths. They want to see what the audience of D&D players sees as D&D's problems, and are perhaps less interested by one internal stakeholder's perspective. Though I imagine that perspective still matters, it's also subject to testing and validation with the actual audience of the game (or at least a fairly dedicated slice of the audience).

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

 

[overgeeked]

It’s wild and sad that people are entirely unaware of a time before the OGL. Other games flourished. Other games were played more than D&D. D&D was nearly dead and gone. The only thing that saved it was the OGL. There was a bright and glorious time in the late 80s and 90s when D&D was not king. One game to rule them all. Sigh.

 

[JEB]

Not everyone agreed with Noonan on the problems that 4e needed to fix, or how 4e fixed them.

That seems to be a common mistake companies make when they update or reimagine an existing game/franchise/etc., unfortunately.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

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."