D&D 4E Perspective: 4E as one of "Ten most necessary remakes"

[ourchair]

I liked the fact that 4th Edition is considered a great remake. It is an idea I wholly support.

Too bad the rest of the article is crud.

 

[fumetti]

@UnknownAtThisTime: Henc! That image set off my nerd-rage initiator 3 times in rapid succession before sanity kicked in.

And yeah, I was immediately turned off by Planet of the Apes being a must-remake. So I wasn't surprised that the 4e entry was mostly hollow too.

Having said that, I do agree that 4e was a "necessary" remake. I loved 3ed when it came out (and it's what pulled me back in after a close to 10 year hiatus), but in hindsight I think 4ed is everything 3ed should have been. I'm disappointed that WotC didn't continue with the OGL, but just based on a pure "designer's hat" reaction, 4th edition was just as necessary as 2nd edition was, perhaps even more so. 3rd edition made D&D relevant again, but 4th edition is much more forward looking.

To me, necessary for a DnD remake means the current version is unworkable or unappealing to the current audience. I never saw that as true for 3E.

4E wasn't a simple streamlining of 3E, so I don't see the connection to 2E. When 2E came out, the early books seemed almost unnecessary because the changes were so slight. 4E is much more radically different.

 

[moxcamel]

To me, necessary for a DnD remake means the current version is unworkable or unappealing to the current audience. I never saw that as true for 3E.

Hmm...by this criteria we should still be playing 2nd edition.

I guess I think that 4e is "necessary" because it's the first version of the game that is well and truly balanced. Obviously there's going to be differing opinions on this, and I certainly don't want to start an edition war, but at least from my DM seat I have players playing characters they'd have never played in previous editions because now they feel like they can both play a character that's both interesting and can still contribute to the party's success.

4E wasn't a simple streamlining of 3E, so I don't see the connection to 2E. When 2E came out, the early books seemed almost unnecessary because the changes were so slight. 4E is much more radically different.

I don't think streamlining was ever a goal, although unifying the mechanics definitely was. For example, even if you're not all that familiar with the rules, if you guess that the roll you need to make is d20 + 1/2 level + some relative modifier, you've got about an 80% chance (completely made-up statistic) of being right. This is much less true with previous editions.

Again, not a slam against previous editions, and heck I'm even a player in an ongoing and very enjoyable Pathfinder game (that started as a 3ed game) that is a heck of a lot of fun. But when I think of the future of the game and the ability to bring in a new generation of players, I believe 4e was an absolutely necessary next step in the evolution of the game.