Opinions on "Does Format Matter"

[delericho]

Eh, there's some truth in what he says, but not a huge amount (for my group, at least).

If I'm honest, we came to 4e predisposed not to like it (due to poor marketing). It read much better than we had expected. It plays better than it reads.

But we really tried to give 4e a fair try (indeed, for the first time ever, all the players went out and bought PHBs).

What killed 4e for us was the combat grind, which we hit immediately. The first encounter in "Kobold Hall" is the PCs vs half a dozen kobolds. (For a useful comparison, the very first adventure we played in 3e was "The Burning Plague" which featured similar encounters vs small numbers of kobolds.)

The difference was very marked. That encounter in 3e would have taken us a few minutes to play through. Even on day 1 with 3e, encounters with kobolds were quick and simple. Under 4e, the encounter took 50 minutes to play out, and ran long after the interesting tactical options had been explored.

The remaining encounters were much the same. By the time the adventure ended in a TPK, we had already decided this was not the game for us, and that group has never looked back.

I have run 4e exactly once since then (with a different group), which was intended to be a run through of the new "Tomb of Horrors". Again, the adventure starts with what should be a quick, throwaway encounter to set the scene.

It lasted more than 2.5 hours, out of out 3 hour session. (And, again, ran long after the interesting options were exhausted.)

I cannot tell a story under those conditions. One encounter per session, and one session every two weeks, would mean that the plot would advance more slowly than "Lost".

(Sorry, this wasn't supposed to turn into an anti-4e rant. The grind issues are well-known, and 4e is what it is. And, indeed, I'm happy to play 4e, especially if the DM stays away from WotC's awful pregen adventures.)

The bottom line (for us at least) is that while using the older format would have reduced the culture shock of coming to the game, it is a fairly minor point. Most of the damage was done before the game even released, and the grind issue sealed the deal. Neither of these would be helped by a different format.

 

[delericho]

Actually, after some use, I've found the 4e layout to be okay. I'm still not a fan, but it probably would be better (in actual use) than the older format.

But the one thing that it gets badly wrong is The Wall, that huge block of endless power descriptions in the middle of the book. On first read-through, this is an absolute disaster. (And, yes, the 3e PHB had its own Wall of Spells. The difference, though, is that the spells are placed at the end of the book, while the 4e Wall is early in the book, before the new player gets a chance to come to grips with the game. This is especially damning as the powers sometimes refer to things that are not defined until later [W].)

 

[DracoSuave]

Thing with that wall... it IS where it should be. I shouldn't be looking and flipping through fifty different pages to find out what it means when it says my fighter has access to four different powers.

Sticking powers at the end of the book doesn't make sense in comparison to sticking the powers with the classes they belong to. Just doesn't.

 

[delericho]

Thing with that wall... it IS where it should be.

Yes and no.

When playing the game, I agree, it's where it should be.

The problem is, before people even get to play the game, someone has to have a grasp on how the game is to be played, and that (generally) means having read through large parts of the book. The Wall makes it extremely hard to get through the PHB (I know - I did it).

Either way, I think The Wall is a major, major problem. However, I don't think there's a good solution to it.

 

[Jhaelen]

The layout didn't irk me. The art did. I much preferred the art style of early 3e to early 4e. I've been playing since '92, but Sam Wood and Todd Lockwood are the artists who most epitomize what I think D&D should look like.

Definitely! One of the first comments I heard from one of my 3e players when I proudly presented the new 4e books was "ugh, so what's new is that it's now ugly?!"

The 4e layout is very clean, clinically clean, even. And though that made it more readable it was also a part of the problem when compared to the ornate look in 3e. Another part of the problem was the minimal amount of fluff. Reading the books simply wasn't fun.

In other words, like almost everything it wasn't a single thing but a combination of things that had a jarring effect on people.

 

[DracoSuave]

Yes and no.

When playing the game, I agree, it's where it should be.

The problem is, before people even get to play the game, someone has to have a grasp on how the game is to be played, and that (generally) means having read through large parts of the book. The Wall makes it extremely hard to get through the PHB (I know - I did it).

Either way, I think The Wall is a major, major problem. However, I don't think there's a good solution to it.

Thing is, it's a part of how to create a character. That should be first. Before there, there's a section on how to read powers, and the chapters are laid out in order of the steps of character creation, leaving the fiddly rules stuff that you don't actually require on a moment-to-moment basis in the back.

My complaint is there's no 'This is how to create a character!' section and there's no 'This is an example of gameplay in progress!' section. Both of those things make understanding what's going on so much easier.

And to be fair, Pathfinder is the same way. It predisposes you understand how third edition works in its presentation, but then doesn't make it easy for you to understand what's changed since third edition.

Dear RPG designers: It is good design for your core book to include examples of play.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

The layout didn't irk me. The art did. I much preferred the art style of early 3e to early 4e. I've been playing since '92, but Sam Wood and Todd Lockwood are the artists who most epitomize what I think D&D should look like.

Are you talking about the art that had me paging through the magic items section looking for the "Buckle" slot?

I prefer 1e style. The cover of the AD&D Players Manual is to me the most evocative image of all.

 

[Lalato]

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]... Please don't take this as an attack on you, but I honestly think you guys were doing it wrong. The groups I've played with often get through 3-4 encounters plus roleplaying in a 4-5 hour session. This hasn't really changed from edition to edition for me.

This is definitely where I think examples of play would be extremely useful. It would be really nice to have that in the book so that all players could reference the various examples of play. I think there are some examples already there, but there should be more and better ones.

That, however, doesn't resolve the greater problem of player indecision. I do agree that 4th edition added player indecision to all players instead of those few with arcane powers. Where before the fighter would just swing at stuff and be done, the fighter now has to decide whether to use an at-will, encounter or daily combat maneuver. If your players are naturally indecisive or aren't paying attention prior to their turn, this will definitely add time to combat. The opposite is also true though... if your players are watching the combat, they can decide well before their turn comes up exactly what they need to do... and that's really how you get through a combat quickly. It's also how the combat stays exciting for everyone.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. As to the OP... I think there is something to the format idea. I think there are probably a number of folks who would have taken to 4e were the format more similar to 3e. Unfortunately, the actual number is unknowable. And it's very difficult to judge how one would have reacted after the fact. For me, 4e's format changes were a net positive.

 

[KidSnide]

I think he's dead-on right. The format has a huge psychological impact by making 4e look like a different game from 3e. Between the new art direction and the new rules presentation, the 4e book feels very different from 3e. I think the new format is easier to use, but I think there's no question that it also causes a disconnect from 3e.

Of course, it's also worth noting that the 4e PH1 is a pretty terrible book. The rules design is solid (errata notwithstanding), but there's very little in it that's fun to read or helps me imagine how I might have fun during a game.

-KS

 

[delericho]

delericho... Please don't take this as an attack on you,

No worries...

but I honestly think you guys were doing it wrong. The groups I've played with often get through 3-4 encounters plus roleplaying in a 4-5 hour session. This hasn't really changed from edition to edition for me.

"Tomb of Horrors" wasn't a great fit for the group in question* - it starts out at 10th level (IIRC), which means that the characters and options are pretty complex, and the group was of mixed expertise with the rules.

I've played a campaign with an almost identical player roster, starting at 1st level, and we typically got through 3 encounters (just) in a 3 hour session. However, every encounter, even pretty basic ones, have clocked in at 40 minutes or so, which matches pretty closely with the 50 minutes I noted for "Kobold Hall". For me, that's just too much, and so I won't run 4e again (although I'm happy to play, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone else the fun they have with the system ).

* Also, sad to say, "Tomb of Horrors" really isn't a good adventure. The first chapter is great, but after that, it gets progressively worse as it goes. I was most disappointed by this. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, though - WotC have never been good at published adventures, with a very small number of shining exceptions.