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

[Alzrius]

The latter is the objectively more open license.

I disagree with this assessment, for the reason given below:

For the 2024 rules, I see little value to using an OGL version of the SRD compared to a CC-BY version.

The value is that the OGL mandates that any new material derived from existing Open Game Content must be itself Open Game Content, and so perpetuates a "virtuous circle" wherein subsequent creators have progressively greater amounts of material to avail themselves of. The CC-BY-4.0 license, if I understand it correctly, has no such mandate; you can make derivative material from stuff that's been declared open, and not have the new material be open itself.

I suppose you could define the CC-BY-4.0 as "more open" in terms of "less mandates on the users," but it's far less open in terms of "creating more open material that content creators can use."

 

[Aldarc]

That...would be a huge improvement, yeah. I never minded the division into AEDU, but it felt a little too classically Vancian to me. I'd rather have had, you have X/Y uses of encounter/daily powers, and can use whichever ones you know up to that point. Of course then the labels make a little less sense.

The other thing that bugged me was having to replace rather than add new powers past a certain point. It felt as if my character was forgetting the basics! (And I recall that often the higher-tier powers didn't thematically fit my character as well; another frustration.) I'd rather powers had some tier-based scaling to them. But that of course increases the size of the catalogue text, and I've already mentioned I'm not a fan of giant catalogues of special abilities.

Possibly, but it also potentially reduces the catalogue depending on how you write them. Tier-based scaling would be an interesting way to approach the change.

Though not about the structure, I think that I probably would lean harder into the World Axis mythos for power sources, possibly getting rid of Arcane entirely or connecting it to the Feywild. For example, moving the Sorcerer from an Arcane Striker to an Elemental/Chaos Striker.

 

[overgeeked]

Every time one of these type threads pop up I always get the urge to grab my 4e books off the shelf. As much I as didn't enjoy it, it's still fun to go back through.

I do that once a year. Pull them down and flip through them. Give a little thought to this or that house rule, how to incorporate the best of 4E into 5E, etc. 4E is still hands down my favorite edition of WotC D&D. I’d love to have a 4.5E that streamlined combat like 5E but kept just about everything else from 4E.

 

[Cadence]

And that’s the benefit of the OGL over the CC-BY. Everything that was open content prior to January 2023 is open under the OGL, not the CC-BY. The CC-BY license might be more open, but it has wildly less content available for D&D and RPGs.

As far as I can tell, anything in CC-BY can be used by someone in their new OGL product, as long as they follow the CC-BY crediting rules in addition to the OGL license.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I disagree with this assessment, for the reason given below:

The value is that the OGL mandates that any new material derived from existing Open Game Content must be itself Open Game Content, and so perpetuates a "virtuous circle" wherein subsequent creators have progressively greater amounts of material to avail themselves of. The CC-BY-4.0 license, if I understand it correctly, has no such mandate; you can make derivative material from stuff that's been declared open, and not have the new material be open itself.

I suppose you could define the CC-BY-4.0 as "more open" in terms of "less mandates on the users," but it's far less open in terms of "creating more open material that content creators can use."

You'd be right, in theory, if publishers "paid it forward" more often. But we saw with the Black flag SRD, and often with others throughout 5e's existance, that the third party rarely does. They open things required by the license and keep everything else as product identity. Under this usage, the OGL is a CC-BY license with baggage.

You can argue under ideal altruism that the OGL would be preferable, as it promotes more sharing. Unfortunately, we don't seem to live in that world.

 

[Neonchameleon]

while I agree that it does not have to be mind control, the below certainly does sound more like mind control

Why?

Swordmage curses the victim. Victim knows they have been cursed and they have two choices:

• Attack the swordmage
• Attack someone else and suffer the effects of the curse (either reduced damage or the swordmage teleporting next to them and stabbing them).

They get to decide. And frequently they decide to chase the swordmage.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I mean, you keep asserting that there's no inherent design reason, but I've pointed out that there is: preserving class identity and balance.

I think you misunderstand @pemerton; I don't think he's saying that classes are a bad thing. I think he's saying that the specific set of classes used by D&D are arbitrary. And there's no specific reason to break them the way they are by spells. If anything I think he's arguing for more not fewer possible breaks.

And we do have arcanists that can heal in 5e; bards, divine soul sorcerers, and celestial warlocks. None of which make clerics or druid redundant.

Rolemaster goes in the other direction - it's the system I first switched to when I got tired of AD&D. My experience with Rolemaster is that the granularity of character design actually led to more homogeneity, not less,

I can agree with this.

 

[Alzrius]

You'd be right, in theory, if publishers "paid it forward" more often. But we saw with the Black flag SRD, and often with others throughout 5e's existance, that the third party rarely does. They open things required by the license and keep everything else as product identity. Under this usage, the OGL is a CC-BY license with baggage.

You can argue under ideal altruism that the OGL would be preferable, as it promotes more sharing. Unfortunately, we don't seem to live in that world.

I'm not sure what you mean regarding the Black Flag SRD, since as I recall that was an ORC License product and not an OGL one. Likewise, the entire point of the OGL is that the "required by the license" category is set in the license itself, covering all derivative materials (in essence, all game mechanics) rather than whatever the publisher does (or doesn't) feel like (even if there have been some bad actors claiming that Product Identity covers things that it clearly doesn't).

But really, the "ideal altruism" strikes me as very important, because even if we don't live in that world today, we might very well tomorrow.

Tabletop role-playing games have long struck me as having value in their potentiality more than any other medium. I've seen numerous gamers buying products, not for any immediate value that they'd derive from them, but instead finding value because they think they might be able to use them someday. "A desert sourcebook?" says a gamer, currently running a political game in a temperate climate, "I should pick this up in case the PCs get suckered in by that red herring the ambassador threw them last week about going to the Land of Burning Sands." Or maybe they pick up a book about lycanthropes because they think it might be an interesting twist to have the ambassador be a wererat, and could give some interesting tools to work with. Or that some new monster book might have just the thing for a summoned minion, etc.

Heck, half the time they don't even worry about issues of compatibility; the ideas alone are worth mining, particularly if it's something that is easily (for them) converted between game lines.

Open Game Content leans in to this idea of potentiality. It leans into it hard. It allows for content creators to potentially find something that's perfect for what they're doing years, maybe decades, after it was published, available to be used and ready to be expanded upon. Does that happen very much? No, but the possibility is there, and in that regard strikes me as evoking the spirit of tabletop RPGs in a way that I find to be evocative in the extreme, and which the CC-BY-4.0 just doesn't live up to compared to the OGL.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think 4E marking is borderline, but other fighter features are absolutely over the top game mechanics in my opinion. It's fine to say that I can influence another human in a one-on-one fight. But on a battlefield against multiple opponents? Sure there's a fighter guy in heavy armor but there's also the raging barbarian about to chop my head off. Why should the fighter be more threatening.

Because the fighter is the one who specialises in taking advantage in small gaps in the opponent's guard. Take your eyes off the barbarian and he will wind up for another swing. Take your eyes off the fighter and he'll try to slip a sword point through your defences in the same amount of time.

You should only not be more afraid of taking your attention off the fighter if (a) you are immune to being stabbed (in which case you shouldn't fear the barbarian either), (b) you are immune to fear (in which case who cares?) or (c) you suck at threat assessment.

Then it always works on any creature, whether or not they have a mind. Why can I intimidate a golem, a magical construct.

You can't intimidate a golem. But you can stab them. If the golem attacks the barbarian the fighter is likely to stab them, knocking them off balance in the process. Golems can ignore the fear effect. They can not ignore the stabbed and pushed off balance effect.

None of the fighter powers are wrong or bad. They serve a purpose in the game if that's the type of game you want to play. You can just accept them as pure game mechanics put in their to support the fighter's role and move on. You can accept that the game mechanics have priority over the simulation, that they don't have to have a passing resemblance to (action movie) reality.

Or you can work out what they actually do. And that effects like Marking and Combat Challenge (the two go together for a fighter) would be entirely at home in a grittily realistic game. 4e is (like all D&D) a game that runs on what can charitably called action movie physics

Or is it impossible in your universe to (a) get in people's faces and knock them off balance or (b) be better than other characters at taking advantage of minor lapses in concentration?

Just for the love of Gygax stop telling me that I just don't understand how these things work because you happen to think the game mechanic is a good one to have.

Then for the love of Gygax stop demonstrating that you just don't understand how these things work to the point that you think that people only get distracted by people who test their guard and physically bully them if you are using action movie physics.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I wish everyone on both sides would admit we don't have access to the real numbers... we can't say it bombed or blew away or was a success or fail except in our own opinions...

We know that as of late 2013 (and almost a year and a half after the release of the final 4e book) there were more than 70,000 paid D&D Insider subscribers and that unsubscribing took you out of the group. We also know that as of late 2013 the cheapest D&D Insider package (the annual one) was $72 a year. This means that at a minimum in 2013 4e was raking in $5 million a year for just the cost of server maintenance. Any suggestion that 4e made anything vaguely resembling a loss is simply laughable, and the idea that sales had fallen off a cliff means that early sales must have been spectacular.

I'm pretty sure that without an equivalent way of obtaining recurrent spending 3.X wasn't remotely that profitable in early 2008.

And ironically WotC then had to go out and buy D&D Beyond for almost $150 million.