Non-D&D 4Ed

[Dungeoneer]

4e lends itself pretty well to table-top skirmishing/action gaming, well-suited to kung-fu action movies and pro-wrestling, but a bit shifted away from many years of D&D traditions and tropes. I'd have used the action gaming as the main selling point as an alternative way to play your D&D, not as the official replacement.

"Action gaming"? And here I thought I was playing an intricate and involved tactical combat game, where encounters take an hour or more to resolve.

I'm not a big Pro Wrestling fan, admittedly, but nothing I've ever experienced at the 4e table suggested Hulk Hogan to me.

 

[delericho]

I've come to the conclusion that 4Ed could have been bigger than it is if it were not released under the D&D badge.

It would have been better received in some quarters. But in terms of sales? Not a chance.

How would YOU do a non-D&D version of 4Ed?

Do something other than fantasy. I might have gone with a Gamma World style post-apoc (maybe try to license Fallout?), or a dystopian near-future (haven't had a good cyberpunk-genre game for some time), or perhaps space opera (since the Star Wars license was coming to an end).

And, frankly, I think I would have embraced the boardgame-y bits of the game a bit more, and maybe build collectable card mechanics in from the get-go.

Oh, and simplify more. The current soup of options is too thick, IMO. Three years in, the game is really saturated with stuff.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've come to the conclusion that 4Ed could have been bigger than it is if it were not released under the D&D badge. My rationale is as follows:
...

How would YOU do a non-D&D version of 4Ed?

It seems to me that you are asking an interesting question which is being obscured by the predicate at the start of the question.

For instance, I don't think that 4e would have been bigger if it hadn't been D&D. I think it would have been much smaller - you disagree, but we end up talking about that predicate rather than the IMO more interesting question about how people might create a generic 4e, what they think it would look like.


It might be worth starting a new thread which just has that question, without the current framing. What do you think?

Cheers

 

[billd91]

"Action gaming"? And here I thought I was playing an intricate and involved tactical combat game, where encounters take an hour or more to resolve.

I'm not a big Pro Wrestling fan, admittedly, but nothing I've ever experienced at the 4e table suggested Hulk Hogan to me.

It certainly can take a long time to resolve things, but the characters are engaged in some fairly wild action. I admit, the action moniker is a bit stretched compared to a much more fast-paced game like Feng Shui, but it was best I could come up with to cover what the PCs are trying to do.

And given the once/encounter aspect of most powers, it's well suited to kung fu action movies or pro-wrestling which both often include special moves that usually only get scripted into a fight once each.

 

[ferratus]

I can see what 4e was trying to do. Take all of the powers that were in feats, substitution levels, and spells and unify them into one system of modular rules that can be easily swapped in and swapped out of a class. Really, 4e is really just the rules of 3e as seen by a computer programmer.

So if 4e wasn't a way to recreate 3e using the efficiency of class-based programming, what exactly would it be trying to do?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Let's look at your 4 changes:

Actually, only the last 2 are mine. The others you listed- plus ditching the traditional D&D Cosmology (which I mentioned in another post in this thread)- were all lifted from the commentaries of early 4Ed adopters in Edition Wars threads. While I didn't agree with their assessment of the superiority of 4Ed, they did start my brain down this path of what the game would be like without the legacy issue.

It could but is it a good idea? Good vs. Evil, Law vs. Chaos etc. is iconic in fantasy - do you want to ditch something recognizable that someone looking at the system could latch on to? I suppose you could completely divorce alignment from mechanics and make it purely fluff - or you could go the other direction and actually have alignment really mean something.

Many if not most FRPGs do without alignment whatsoever, and do just fine. Personally, I like alignment in D&D (for many reasons), but prefer the old 9 valence system as opposed to the 5 point system 4Ed uses. It seems an ill-conceived, asymmetrical compromise between D&D legacy issues and games that ditch alignment. Personally, whether it had the D&D badge or not, I think that a G-U-E continuum (RPing your L & C) or no alignment at all (pure RP) would have been 4Ed's alignment system would have been better than what it has now.

People like class based structure (there was an interesting article by Monte Cook on this a few years back), I think taking away classes would actually drive people away not toward the system. Kind of like, I want to like GURPS, I really do - but while I love the supplements I just can't take the system.

Again, a class-based system isn't necessary to having a quality FRPG experience. GURPS, HERO and other games do without. True20 does just fine with minimal numbers of very flexible & customizable classes.

This has potential - basically give some ideas and basics of what races look like and provide a nice way for people to muck with it.

Thanks- I thought it would make it easier for the game to run homebrewed Barsoom games, or recreating the panoply of Planetouched from 3.X...and expanding upon them!

Again interesting, but wouldn't you have an even bigger problem than you do now with people jumping up and down "fighters shouldn't cast spells!"
One thing that could be done is a better narrative portrayal of powers than the ones currently provided.

I think- though I could be wrong- that complaints about fighters casting spells is not about casting spells, but how 4Ed re-characterizes martial techniques as powers. After all, "gish" builds are insanely popular, near as I can tell.

Some things <snip>
Really play up rituals: Rituals are a big departure from before and can really change the pacing of a game/campaign and some of them are just cool (the cure disease ritual is essentialy magic chemo: it might cure you or it might kill you quicker than the disease itself) plus its a true departure from Vancian magic (for better or worse). It actually bugs me that WoTC has stepped back from rituals rather than embracing/expanding them.

Yes x 1000! I don't think they got them all right in terms of cost and other mechanics, but I think the idea of ritual magic is something the game has always needed. Whichever way D&D goes in the future, ritual magic in some way, shape or form should be a keeper.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The D&D brand name carries weight...

(and numerous other similar, good points)

Yes, yes it does.

But like I said, there is more than one way to use a brand name to launch another product than simply slapping that name on the product as the product's name.

Brand association- "another product from the makers of _______" is nearly as powerful a marketing tool as simple branding, and has the additional benefit of avoiding backlash and its long-term effects on the brand. If a brand associated product flops, you have options- kill it, rename it, sell it, etc. If a branded product flops, you have a serious problem.

 

[Mercurius]

Interesting inquiry, Danny. I'm going to bypass the whole question as to whether your premise about 4E being more successful as a non-D&D game because I don't really think that's the point of your original post. However, first I'm going to comment on this:

I probably wouldn't ever have looked into it if it hadn't been the next edition of D&D.

I'm not saying this because I believe it's a bad system - because I actually think it's a good system. I'm saying it because I am aware that there are dozens of equally good or better systems out there that I've not yet looked into simply because they're not as well known as the D&D brand.

Yes, I agree with this although it is more than just because of how well known the D&D brand is, it is being part of the D&D universe, the iconic themes and tropes of D&D. There are other fantasy RPGs with systems that I actually prefer to any edition of D&D, at least on an artistic/design level (say, Talislanta and Ars Magica, for instance), and if I were to name my top five pre-published fantasy settings I'm not sure if any TSR/WotC worlds would be on the list (or at least not in the top two or three, which would be Talislanta, Earthdawn, and Shadow World), but the thing is that I grew up on D&D, I was imprinted with D&D (AD&D 1E, to be exact), and I am habituated to the tropes and themes of D&D. I've played and enjoyed other RPGs, but I always end up coming back to D&D because...it feels like home, I guess.

So 4E as a different fantasy RPG wouldn't have caught my eye as much; I might have bought the core rulebook for collection's sake, but I probably would have focused my gaming time on whatever the most recent edition of D&D was.

Back to Danny's inquiry. If I understand your question, you are asking what would we do with the 4E rule set if it wasn't died to the D&D legacy? If it was just another fantasy RPG? And, in light of what I wrote above, what sort of game would have caught my eye?

I might do is try to create a non-anime Exalted type game, a Gonzo Fantasy RPG, so to speak. Like the idea of Exalted but dislike anime/manga? Try Gonzo Fantasy RPG!

As for specifics, I like a lot of what you've already said - do away with alignment, the class structure, maybe even skills and feats. Strip the game down a bit and build it back up.

There would be no classes, but instead something like "power paths" - I'd take the power source idea and exploit it. If it truly was an Exalted-esque Gonzo fantasy game, then all characters might be inherently "magical" - or at least imbued with a power source, which would be akin to different energy types or signatures with some kind of mythological theme. Maybe all characters have the blood of a different lineage of primordial races: The Blood of the Warmasters (Martial), Wizard-Kings (Arcane), the Dark Ones (Shadow), the Enlightened (Ki), etc.

All PCs might have a score in different power sources, and thus could "multi-class" by developing different power sources with experience points. Each point in a power source opened up new powers, sort of like levels in D&D.

Most skills would operate through ability scores, but PCs could specialize in specific skills, or create their own specialties within the purview of an ability score.

I might change ability scores slightly, maybe differentiate Wisdom into Willpower and Perception.

I'd kill Feats and replace them with Talents and maybe add Flaws or something similar to the Greek notion of Hamartia (your tragic flaw), where the player and GM have to craft a significant defect to the character...

And so on. I'm just making this up as I go along, so take all of it with a grain of salt...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As Peter Griffin might say..."Go on..."

Are you saying that each PC has a tragic flaw...that they HAVE to have one? If so, that's a bit of a stronger approach than games that use Disadvantages or Flaws as a PC building option. That is something that could really help both the GM and the player get a solid grip on the PC's concept.

 

[Aldarc]

(and numerous other similar, good points)

Yes, yes it does.

But like I said, there is more than one way to use a brand name to launch another product than simply slapping that name on the product as the product's name.

Brand association- "another product from the makers of _______" is nearly as powerful a marketing tool as simple branding, and has the additional benefit of avoiding backlash and its long-term effects on the brand. If a brand associated product flops, you have options- kill it, rename it, sell it, etc. If a branded product flops, you have a serious problem.

Despite your insistence of brand association, 4E still would not be as popular as it is now without being labeled as the next edition of "D&D." I think that once you get that, you can move on to the heart of Plane Sailing's interesting question of how to make a generic system based off of 4E, which avoids the bias of your framing.