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

[Oofta]

I can only speak for myself and the people I played with. There were fundamental issues that caused me to burn out on the game, it just wasn't for me or 90% of the people I had been playing with. It had nothing to do with changing FR, I couldn't have cared less about that.

I was a big proponent of 4E when it first came out, 3.5 had significant issues especially at higher levels. I ran or helped run a couple game days in a major metro area, and ran a home game. At first we had a ton of people. Over the course of a year or two, it dropped to a fraction of what we had seen initially and was less than what we had for 3.x. If 5E hadn't come out I wouldn't have continued to play D&D. I could go into detail, but I think 4E had fundamental flaws and it simply didn't appeal to the same audience. Perhaps as a completely different game it would still be around although I simply can't see it ever taking away that much market share from 5E.

Suffice to say that I disagree with Mr. Heinsoo.

 

[Oofta]

Around the 30 minute mark Teos asks Rob about the OGL. It’s a great response. The point was to “monopolize the industry’s creativity. Everybody does D&D.” It’s refreshing to have people just say the quiet part loud. Ryan Dancy has said similar things before. It’s weird how other people don’t believe him (or Rob) when they say things like this.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the OGL for the simple reason that it stifled creativity. Doesn't mean I'd want to play the games the other companies would have come up with and I buy 3PP now and then, but I think competition is healthy and the OGL shut down a lot of competition.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the OGL for the simple reason that it stifled creativity. Doesn't mean I'd want to play the games the other companies would have come up with and I buy 3PP now and then, but I think competition is healthy and the OGL shut down a lot of competition.

I believe the 4e licensing was called the GSL (Game System License, maybe? I don't recall). The OGL (Open Gaming License) encouraged a lot of 3PP supplements for DnD.

Now, if by "creativity" you're limiting yourself to "Non-DnD" systems, then yeah. But then those wouldn't have been threatend by any of WotC licensing shenannigans.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the OGL for the simple reason that it stifled creativity. Doesn't mean I'd want to play the games the other companies would have come up with and I buy 3PP now and then, but I think competition is healthy and the OGL shut down a lot of competition.

The problem is, 95% of "competition" will never see the light of play.

It's like trying to have competing internets, or competing phone networks. Network effects are incredibly important, and having systems that are fundamentally incompatible with one another is a huge hurdle for getting more folks to play TTRPGs.

I would love--love love love love--to have even a small fraction of the attention 5e gets directed at literally any of a dozen other systems I prefer far more, but it's never going to happen. I'm exceedingly unlikely to ever play any of those games.

Unless something outright kills D&D, forcing its fans to scatter to the winds and thus beefing up a bazillion smaller systems in the process, there will never be meaningful competition in the TTRPG space. The one and only time "competition" ever occurred...it was D&D competing with itself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I believe the 4e licensing was called the GSL (Game System License, maybe? I don't recall). The OGL (Open Gaming License) encouraged a lot of 3PP supplements for DnD.

Now, if by "creativity" you're limiting yourself to "Non-DnD" systems, then yeah. But then those wouldn't have been threatend by any of WotC licensing shenannigans.

I believe the idea is that, per the references above, by putting out the OGL, WotC hoped to have a stranglehold on future RPG development. Because people could create their own rules...and risk being eternally obscure. OR...they could scratch whatever actually unique and distinct rules stuff they intended to do, and publish something under the OGL, accepting all the flaws and limitations and baked-in structures of D&D, and be guaranteed a (potential) audience of hundreds of thousands of customers.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I played 4E from the beginning and had several campaigns of it, so I enjoyed my time with the game. That being said... I do recognize things that in my opinion would be things that would bother other people and had they not be present in 4E (or presented in a different way), it might not have generated the same reaction.

Number 1 is the presentation of powers. Having everything in those green, red, and black-topped boxes just looked so much different than anything we were ever used to that even if the information was pretty much the same as abilities and spells we had gotten in the past, it just didn't look the same. And with 30 levels of powers for however many classes there were... it was just page after page of these colored boxes. People think the Spells section in 5E makes a person go a bit cross-eyed trying to read through it... the powers section of the PHB was worse.

When people say that had 4E started with Essentials it would have done better... I think it's the presentation of powers in Essentials that is the correct point. Essentials presented 4E material in a 3E class feature style and would not have been as jarring.

Number 2 was the loss of potential Theater of the Mind. Now we all know a crapton of us use miniatures and maps and grids so playing 4E with a pseudo-mandatory focus on the grid was not going to be an issue necessarily to how most of us game... but by not paying at least some service to Theater of the Mind and "creative use" for magic an abilities that were not the standard 4E combat mechanics (for instance having no illusion spells that allowed you to just "make stuff up")... it felt like something was missing. Even if no one actually would have used it or necessarily cared, the fact that it wasn't there at all I'm sure just again felt jarring. Jarring enough to cause some people to react negatively and enough of a stir to make it turn into an issue.

Number 3 was the movement of the primal classes, bard, and half-orc and gnome out of PHB I and into PHB II. Yes, the PHB II was released I think like 9 months after PHB I so it wasn't actually that big of a deal when you consider the lifespan of the game... but as they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. And while the Warlord, Warlock, Tiefling and Dragonborn were cool additions... the fact that they replaced other things that people had wanted and enjoyed in the past, again just built up that negative reaction further and sent that snowball rolling down the hill faster and faster.

And finally Number 4 was the GSL and its odious rules to that license that pretty much stopped any company from wanting to use it-- and as a result, created Pathfinder out of it. And sticking with 3.5 and then turning into Pathfinder in my opinion was the absolute most important reason why 4E did not succeed to the level people wanted. Because there was a valid D&D alternative that everyone who were initially turned off by 4E (due to the things I listed above) could all turn to and use. And because 3.5/PF still had the OGL, you had all the third-party companies that players formed relationships with still using the older edition rulesets through the OGL for all their new material. So people didn't HAVE to switch. And a crapton of people didn't.

4E was a very good game on its own... but as an extension of the D&D brand... it just didn't maintain the stylistic branding and available material people were used to over the previous 30 years. And enough people just rebelled against it and had somewhere else they could turn. Which they did.

 

[Zardnaar]

I know for me that setting didn't even enter into it. The rules and gameplay were enough to put off my group. We played a session of the 4e rendition of B2 and said NAH.

I said then, and I stick to it, 4e isn't a bad game - it just wasn't DnD to me. In fact, I'm a big fan of the skirmish boardgames that were released back then (which are just a light reskinning of 4e itself). The other thing I've come to say over the years is that 4e had great ideas, and did a really good job of analysis. It just failed in the implementations. But I'll stop there.

As for the setting, like I said, I never got exposed to it back in 4e proper, but the mark in left in 5e WRT to the other planes isn't one I like. And again, we'll leave it there.

I was playing the D&D skirmish game back then.
Combat took a similar amount of tine as 4E.

So for me whatever 4E was offering on the tactical/skirmishes side I already had it in 3.5 via the minis game. 4E killed that as well along with Dragon and Dungeon.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the OGL for the simple reason that it stifled creativity.

It really didn't; quite the opposite, in fact.

But don't take my word for it. Instead, check out this PhD dissertation that looks at open licenses in general, and the OGL in particular, and concludes that they abet, rather than stifle, creativity.

 

[Zardnaar]

The problem is, 95% of "competition" will never see the light of play.

It's like trying to have competing internets, or competing phone networks. Network effects are incredibly important, and having systems that are fundamentally incompatible with one another is a huge hurdle for getting more folks to play TTRPGs.

I would love--love love love love--to have even a small fraction of the attention 5e gets directed at literally any of a dozen other systems I prefer far more, but it's never going to happen. I'm exceedingly unlikely to ever play any of those games.

Unless something outright kills D&D, forcing its fans to scatter to the winds and thus beefing up a bazillion smaller systems in the process, there will never be meaningful competition in the TTRPG space. The one and only time "competition" ever occurred...it was D&D competing with itself.

If D&D died I think you would still miss out. The players would evaporate or move onto OSR or alt 5E systems.

You're right about networking effects. Seeing it in gaming. I think the top 10 online games most were older titles with established fan bases.

There's only so many games to go around and your new online game is competing with GTAV or whatever.

 

[Zardnaar]

It really didn't; quite the opposite, in fact.

But don't take my word for it. Instead, check out this PhD dissertation that looks at open licenses in general, and the OGL in particular, and concludes that they abet, rather than stifle, creativity.

Well it enables creativity in D&D kinda of killed off not D&D.

I think sone of those other games would die off anyway and some did eg SW D6.