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

[Belen]

I get the impression that your players may not actually be playing the game in its full technical sense - like, are they using encounter and daily powers sensibly, making decisions about their action points, using healing efficiently, etc? If they are not - eg if they are "casual" players who are not really interested in the technical demands of 4e play - then maybe you are using the wrong system.

Have you tried a less technical system with your group? In A Wicked Age, or Dungeon World, would both be examples of that.

This statement just shows why I dislike 4e. My experience was that maybe 1 player in a 4e party understood the system in this way.

That player would get frustrated with the others and the other play would just be frustrated by the complexity.

4e was not a system for people who wanted casual D&D.

 

[GrimCo]

TBH, 3.x also wasn't very casual friendly and had decent learning curve plus it expected decent amount of system mastery on both player and DM side. PF1 had F***ing flowchart for grapple. Also, trap options. SO many trap options. Put bunch of 3.x newbs and one experienced player with decent system mastery and optimizer mindset (not even min maxer) in same party and you can see same dynamic.

 

[Manbearcat]

This statement just shows why I dislike 4e. My experience was that maybe 1 player in a 4e party understood the system in this way.

That player would get frustrated with the others and the other play would just be frustrated by the complexity.

4e was not a system for people who wanted casual D&D.

Correct.

And Jaws is not for people who wanted Catching Up With the Kardashians.

And American Football is not for people who wanted Golf.

And a hamburger is not for people who wanted a salad.

And The Pixies are not for people who wanted Taylor Swift.

And a marathon is not for people who wanted a picnic under a tree.

And so on.

But that then provokes the question of why would you dislike any of the former because they aren’t the latter?

 

[mamba]

But that then provokes the question of why would you dislike any of the former because they aren’t the latter?

because they were expecting a Taylor Swift concert when suddenly the Pixies went on stage instead, to stay with one of your analogies

 

[Belen]

TBH, 3.x also wasn't very casual friendly and had decent learning curve plus it expected decent amount of system mastery on both player and DM side. PF1 had F***ing flowchart for grapple. Also, trap options. SO many trap options. Put bunch of 3.x newbs and one experienced player with decent system mastery and optimizer mindset (not even min maxer) in same party and you can see same dynamic.

Yep. This is why I quit those systems too.

 

[Belen]

But that then provokes the question of why would you dislike any of the former because they aren’t the latter?

I liked OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3.0, 5e.

I grew to dislike 3.5/PF1 and really dislike 4e.

The editions I like feel like D&D to me. They allow me to play and run the styles of games I enjoy.

The editions I dislike make it much more difficult and I do not want systems that are so complex that they detract from the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's true that the reason was not just the GSL. It was also the fact that WotC discontinued their relationship with Paizo for publishing Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Paizo pursued Pathfinder 1 primarily due to financial reasons.

And I'm saying, keep them around. Don't make a competitor. Make them an ally.

Obviously, WotC couldn't have predicted how tremendously successful PF would be. But if they had even an inkling of it, do you think they would have given Paizo the tough-guy treatment? Absolutely the hell not.

 

[Aldarc]

And I'm saying, keep them around. Don't make a competitor. Make them an ally.

Obviously, WotC couldn't have predicted how tremendously successful PF would be. But if they had even an inkling of it, do you think they would have given Paizo the tough-guy treatment? Absolutely the hell not.

I'm not disagreeing with you.

 

[Retreater]

My players "think" they want tactical combat options and told me they like 4e, but they don't interact with the system well.
I know that I miss telling stories with my friends. I miss feeling like I'm creating interesting NPCs to interact with. I miss world building. There's simply not time for anything but prepping encounters, and no time at the session for acting but fighting encounters and rules speak

 

[zakael19]

My players "think" they want tactical combat options and told me they like 4e, but they don't interact with the system well.
I know that I miss telling stories with my friends. I miss feeling like I'm creating interesting NPCs to interact with. I miss world building. There's simply not time for anything but prepping encounters, and no time at the session for acting but fighting encounters and rules speak

I don't understand this. 4e makes encounter creation trivial? When my players got to a couple failures in a SC that I'd telegraphed as leading to an encounter, it took me less then 10 minutes to generate one on the fly including finding a battle map for Roll20 + adding some features with a marker/drawing tool + adjusting a couple viable stat blocks using the 4e DM Cheat sheet.

Everything is in the digital tools in perfect ready to run format. Information is player facing with knowledge rolls so they know who the threats are. If nothing else, I can see prepping a handful of encounter complications (hazards + countdowns or whatever like @Manbearcat suggested) so you can just grab monsters and draw the map, but nothing more complex?

I will say that most of the pre-written encounters are not all that thrilling. I've been running the DMK adventure (Reavers), and most of the combats are pretty serviceable at best except for the boss/elite ones. I've condensed things and rejiggered most of the side encounters to tie them to the players instead, with improvised SCs along the way to make up for the XP. Worked great!

Edit: I did have to work with my players a bit on class choice. One had a wizard at first (and the party had no striker) and wasn't super engaged with the 4e spin on that, so I suggested they try a new PC when we scene changed over to ranger - and they're loving the simplicity and damage of that, and encounters go so much better. Do you have at least 2 players running strikers who are using either a simple class (if they're not engaged), or a high output one? If not, things need to change or you should consider dropping the AC/HP a level and upping damage per the DM Cheat Sheet to make things quicker but a little scarier (or use 13th age escalation die).