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

[Manbearcat]

This whole post reads like “the beatings will continue until morale improves”.

I don't get the meaning of your quip here (at least how it engages with my, sincere, post)? Is it that @Retreater 's game is basically toast and he needs to come to terms with that and move on (imo, he needs to stop running games altogether...he reports back anecdotes of misery after misery after misery...and it appears that there is no end in sight despite him getting an avalanche of both support and advice on these subjects over a long haul...it looks like there needs to be some kind of intervention to be honest)? That looks to be the right assessment. But how it engages with my post I have no idea. My post was:

* Some tongue-in-cheek around behavior/respect.

* A host of varying technical guidance.

* A sincere, and firm, assessment that 4e just breaks down terribly at 5+ PCs. I know people have done it and reported good things (some very good; I think @pemerton 's game featured 5 PCs?)...but I would say the abundance of empirical and theoretical skews significantly in the opposite direction (both in frequency and magnitude). Personally, I would never even consider running D&D 4e with more than 4 characters. 6 or more? Point me to the nearest bridge. I suspect that this is not a small part of Retreater's problem (as other issues with the system that some people have found difficult to resolve get amplified with more table participants).

* A tried-and-true solve for people not paying attention off-turn + not being prepared on-turn + taking too long on-turn.

 

[Valetudo]

4e doesn't break down at 5 pcs. That is the sweat spot. Unfornutaly it breaks down with 3 or less and 6 or more especially around 10th lvl. Too many riders to keep track of. But 4th is the best edition for starting new dms.

 

[Manbearcat]

4e doesn't break down at 5 pcs. That is the sweat spot. Unfornutaly it breaks down with 3 or less and 6 or more especially around 10th lvl. Too many riders to keep track of. But 4th is the best edition for starting new dms.

I appreciate your anecdote and I believe you that you've had good success at 5 PCs. I've seen others report the same (some I trust and know well and I know precisely what things have gone well for them; hyper-skillful and hyper-attentive players and GM...4e absolutely requires both of things for it to sing...and sing it will if those are in play), but I've also seen a lot of complaints about around slog that indexes 5 or more PCs (and certainly indexes poor encounter budgeting deployment, battlefield array deployment, enemy roster configuration, and frequency of SCs to combat).

As far as 3 or less PCs go; "negative, Ghost Rider." I've GMed an extraordinary amount of 3 or less PC games of D&D 4e in the last 15.5 years:

* 2 full games from levels 1-30 with 3 PCs.

* A current Duskvol, Blades in the Dark-inspired 4e D&D game with 3 PCs that has gone from level 1 to level 7.

* A brief Heroic Tier Dark Sun game with 3 PCs (levels 4 to 8).

* A Sengoku Era Japan 4e game with 3 PCs that spanned levels 4 to 16).

* 2 x games with 2 PCs that spanned Heroic through Paragon (from level 1 onward) including a current PBP on here that is nearing level 13.

* 6 solo PC games (including one that just wrapped), each Tier, spanning approximately 3-4 levels on average (1 to 6).


The game works brilliantly with 3 PCs (I think that is the best to be honest). I've had a lot of Companion Characters in every game so I've seen what 4 character and 5 character combats tend to look like. I haven't had issues, but its only because (a) the players I GM are all frosty and attentive on every turn and (b) I very much know what I'm doing in the aforementioned departments of encounter budgeting, battlefield array, enemy roster configuration and SC : combat frequency components of play. Remove (a) and (b) (or even throttle it back) and some issues might emerge.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Without the GSL, Paizo almost certainly never makes PF, but instead makes more 4e content. Lacking a rallying flag and having fewer complaints (because of the lack of setting changes), the grumbles remain mostly just that--grumbles.

This is not true. The GSL is not the reason Paizo made Pathfinder, it's the rule changes in general. They would not have stuck with 4e and would have done their own thing, at-least initially.

All your points combined could have meant Paizo would make 4e content at some point, but Paizo decided to dive deep into Pathfinder as soon as the rule changes in 4e became apparent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is not true. The GSL is not the reason Paizo made Pathfinder, it's the rule changes in general. They would not have stuck with 4e and would have done their own thing, at-least initially.

All your points combined could have meant Paizo would make 4e content at some point, but Paizo decided to dive deep into Pathfinder as soon as the rule changes in 4e became apparent.

At multiple points, people from Paizo have specifically said that they were willing to wait on the decision to make new content for 4e until the GSL was finally out, at which point they absolutely refused to do it. Either they were lying then, or they are lying now, if they're saying that it was purely and exclusively frustration with the rules.

I've read the statements on forums and official announcements from the creators themselves.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

 

[ReshiIRE]

At multiple points, people from Paizo have specifically said that they were willing to wait on the decision to make new content for 4e until the GSL was finally out, at which point they absolutely refused to do it. Either they were lying then, or they are lying now, if they're saying that it was purely and exclusively frustration with the rules.

I've read the statements on forums and official announcements from the creators themselves.

That's interesting.
Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 6 (2008) Forging Our Own Path

As the cold and stormy start of 2008 settled on the Paizo offices, there was a palpable sense of tension. We were well past the point where we normally assigned freelance writing for our Gen Con releases. Wizards of the Coast was set to release Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition at that show, and we were already planning out Second Darkness, the Pathfinder Adventure Path launching at the same time. If we were going to switch it to 4E, we needed to do it soon. But we knew little more about 4E in January than we did at the previous year's Gen Con. Early in the month, Wizards held a conference call with a host of third-party publishers telling us that they were working on a new third-party license and that we would probably have early access to the rules soon, but the lack of a firm commitment or any kind of schedule from Wizards was stretching our patience—and our deadlines.


We were going to have to start writing Second Darkness for 3.5. If Wizards came through quickly, we thought, there was a slim chance that we might still be able to rework it for 4th Edition... but the more we thought about the logistics of learning a new game system, bringing our freelancers up to speed on that system, and then having to develop adventures for a system we'd never even played, it soon became obvious that even if Wizards started to open up the lines of communication immediately, doing Second Darkness as a 4E product was a fool's errand. So as we turned to February, we made the difficult decision to commit to 3.5 for Second Darkness. Our flagship product line would be incompatible with the then-current edition of D&D for at least 6 months.


But that didn't yet mean that 4th Edition was out of the running for the Adventure Path after that one. The continued lack of information of any sort was driving us nuts, and having just had our whole company turned upside down due to Wizards' decision to end the magazine licenses, we were beginning to think that forging our own path forward might be a valid choice. With no license from Wizards in hand, it was unclear whether there actually was any other choice. Nevertheless, we dutifully sent Jason Bulmahn to Wizards' D&D Experience in Fort Wayne, Indiana that February. Jason's mission was to learn as much as he could about 4th Edition, play it as much as he could, and report back with his findings. From that, we would ultimately make a decision that could make or break us. The tension was agonizing. I could barely sleep at night as my mind wrestled with the options. If we made the wrong decision, it could very well mean the end of Paizo.


When Jason returned from D&D Experience, he laid out all the information that he had gleaned. From the moment that 4th Edition had been announced, we had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason's report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn't look like the system we wanted to make products for. Whether a license for 4E was forthcoming or not, we were going to create our own game system based on the 3.5 SRD: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And we were already WAY behind schedule.


Thankfully, Jason had started to experiment with an alternative 3.5 rules system in Fall 2007. It was initially a lark that Jason was hoping he might be able to sell as a PDF somewhere down the road to the inevitable fans of the 3.5 ruleset that weren't going to 4E. He had dubbed the project Mon Mothma. Early in 2008, Jason had presented this document to us, a revision that added a variety of new options to a ruleset we already had experience and comfort with. Knowing the future was uncertain, we encouraged him to start turning his ideas into a complete, coherent rules set.

Quoting a lot from the most relevant article.

2007 does mention the license but primarily focuses on the loss of the magazine license as being the bigger problem, and the 4th edition license being delayed over and over as an issue. Not the changes in GSL, which Paizo doesn't really mention as by that point it was irrelevant.

By the time that dropped Paizo was already committed to their own new 3.5 system as they clearly disliked the 4th edition rules, no new license was forthcoming and Paizo had already been dropped from Wizards plans. The GSL likely didn't help - but it wasn't the catalyst for this.

Pray tell, what sources do you have that contradict this?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's interesting.
Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 6 (2008) Forging Our Own Path



Quoting a lot from the most relevant article.

2007 does mention the license but primarily focuses on the loss of the magazine license as being the bigger problem, and the 4th edition license being delayed over and over as an issue. Not the changes in GSL, which Paizo doesn't really mention as by that point it was irrelevant.

By the time that dropped Paizo was already committed to their own new 3.5 system as they clearly disliked the 4th edition rules, no new license was forthcoming and Paizo had already been dropped from Wizards plans. The GSL likely didn't help - but it wasn't the catalyst for this.

Pray tell, what sources do you have that contradict this?

You clearly understand the source differently than I do. Because that is the main source I was going to reference. As you say, it repeatedly references the license, the delays, the loss of the magazine.

Keep Paizo on board, one way or another. Keep the OGL. Get Paizo to make 4e content. Pathfinder either disappears, or becomes a "let's rebuild 3e within 4e" side project that keeps those fans plugged into the 4e sphere.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I 'understand it different' because the way you frame it is not what Paizo actually said, because the way you said it implies that it was the 'changes' in the GSL that caused the issue; that didn't help. But GSL or no, the 4e changes seem like they would have pushed Paizo out of Wizard's system anyway, or caused great conflict within them.

Your framing leaves out a lot of important detail that make it seem like Paizo, without GSL changes, would have been on board with 4th edition. What they've said makes it clear that's not really true. If anything, an OGL version of 4th edition that Wizards were more up front about would likely have caused Paizo to come to the conclusion to continue with 3.5e faster and begin work on Pathfinder 1st edition faster.

That's not clear from your statement.

I don't see a world where 4th edition plays as it does without Paizo at-least trying to make Pathfinder 1e.

 

[Staffan]

You clearly understand the source differently than I do. Because that is the main source I was going to reference. As you say, it repeatedly references the license, the delays, the loss of the magazine.

My understanding of that blog post is that their reasoning went something like this.

• That new license and rules preview sure is taking a long time, huh?
• Hey, they're running 4e demos. Let's send someone to check those out.
• Yeah OK, that's doesn't seem like something for us. Let's go with plan B, aka Jason's house rules for 3.5e.

By the time the GSL was released, Paizo were already committed to the Pathfinder RPG. Should the GSL had been more third-party friendly, it's not impossible that they would have done both in parallel (much like they're dipping their toes into doing some 5e stuff now), but Pathfinder RPG was already a committed thing by the time that happened.

And yes, there was a lot of stuff surrounding the loss of the Dragon and Dungeon licenses. But that was earlier. I think it's relevant to consider that there's a difference between the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and the Pathfinder RPG. The APs were the replacement for the magazines, and were originally made for 3.5e. But once those were Paizo's bread and butter, they needed a game to make them for – making adventures for an out-of-print game didn't seem like a good long-term plan, and they didn't want to make them for 4e, so 3.75/Pathfinder RPG was it.

Keep Paizo on board, one way or another. Keep the OGL. Get Paizo to make 4e content. Pathfinder either disappears, or becomes a "let's rebuild 3e within 4e" side project that keeps those fans plugged into the 4e sphere.

From the blog, it doesn't seem that that was ever in the cards:
"When Jason returned from D&D Experience, he laid out all the information that he had gleaned. From the moment that 4th Edition had been announced, we had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason's report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn't look like the system we wanted to make products for. Whether a license for 4E was forthcoming or not, we were going to create our own game system based on the 3.5 SRD: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And we were already WAY behind schedule."