Pramas: Does 4E have staying power?

[joethelawyer]

Combat just takes too long in 3.x and 4E.

The extensive rules for implications of movement on the battlefield, and the focus on the visual combat grid are, in my opinion, the main problems for speed. The problem is, I love the grid and the rules for movement on the battlefield - I just hate the time it takes to resolve encounters. How do you keep the options and shorten the time? No idea.

easy. eliminate attacks of opportunity rules and any combat move whose result may create one for either side of the combat.

eliminate flanking rules and anything to do with giving any bonuses to anyone for flanking, including eliminating giving thieves the ability to flank and backstab in battle.

eliminate every combat move other than swinging a weapon at someone. this means eliminating trip, grapple, and all the rest of those listed in the combat section.

lastly, give one attack per round to everyone except fighters who get 2 at 10th level.

that ought to do it. we have implemented all of those rules in our game except the one giving everyone one attack per round, and our combats are faster than most i think.

 

[Jack99]

easy. eliminate attacks of opportunity rules and any combat move whose result may create one for either side of the combat.

eliminate flanking rules and anything to do with giving any bonuses to anyone for flanking, including eliminating giving thieves the ability to flank and backstab in battle.

eliminate every combat move other than swinging a weapon at someone. this means eliminating trip, grapple, and all the rest of those listed in the combat section.

lastly, give one attack per round to everyone except fighters who get 2 at 10th level.

that ought to do it. we have implemented all of those rules in our game except the one giving everyone one attack per round, and our combats are faster than most i think.

Why on earth didnt you stay with 1st or 2nd edition? Sounds like that's what you want to play.

 

[joethelawyer]

Why on earth didnt you stay with 1st or 2nd edition? Sounds like that's what you want to play.

yeah, but the rest of the group doesn't. what you are seeing is the end result of my insidious 2 yr long campaign to nerf the crap out of our 3.0 rules-based game to get the melee back to old school style. it helps that the guys i play with aren't that into learning the rules to see what it is they could actually do.

the other side of it is that i like playing wizards. though i heavily nerfed teleporting, scrying, polymorphing, flying, and buffing spells, i did like the expansion of the wizard in 3.0.

 

[xechnao]

yeah, but the rest of the group doesn't. .... it helps that the guys i play with aren't that into learning the rules to see what it is they could actually do.

So why do they want to specificaly play 3e?

 

[Jack99]

yeah, but the rest of the group doesn't. what you are seeing is the end result of my insidious 2 yr long campaign to nerf the crap out of our 3.0 rules-based game to get the melee back to old school style. it helps that the guys i play with aren't that into learning the rules to see what it is they could actually do.

Okay. Makes sense.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Combat just takes too long in 3.x and 4E.

The extensive rules for implications of movement on the battlefield, and the focus on the visual combat grid are, in my opinion, the main problems for speed. The problem is, I love the grid and the rules for movement on the battlefield - I just hate the time it takes to resolve encounters. How do you keep the options and shorten the time? No idea.

You know, a computer might be able to handle a lot of that for you and take the strain out of all those calculations, heck they may even be able to run virtual 'avatars' of your characters so you can actually see what's going on and give your imagination a bit of a rest too. I wonder if such a thing would ever catch on?

Sorry, i couldn't resist tangential thoughts on a Sunday evening. Also mildy self-amusing thoughts like 3e -> WoW, WoW -> 4e cross my mind, for no good or substantiated reason.

A friend of mine at roleplay this afternoon told me there are 11 million WoW players, another in our game was off to play straight after our session (and so skipping the evening session). It seems an interesting mix of digital and tabletop these days.

 

[joethelawyer]

So why do they want to specificaly play 3e?

because they dont want to play something considered "old." i have them believing that 3.5 is just minor tweaks to 3.0.

i headed off the 4.0 thing in advance after i read it i slammed it. and honestly it wouldn't fit our play style.

 

[DaveMage]

Dave, what would you think about having options that do not use the grid?

It depends on the options, I suppose.

Thinking about it - significant problems might simply be moving on the grid and determining area of effect for spells and effects, rather than the grid itself. I know my games have slowed down when determining where to place that fireball or counting squares to see how far I can move. Also, when summoning, where to put the creatures that arrive, etc.

Edit - on the other hand, removing the grid completely would accomplish two things: one, it would speed play, and two, it would lower the cost barrier to entry for playing the game. A DM wouldn't need minis or a battle mat, not to mention things like tiles, counters, or dungeon dressing (these last three things are completely optional anyway, of course).

easy. eliminate attacks of opportunity rules and any combat move whose result may create one for either side of the combat.

eliminate flanking rules and anything to do with giving any bonuses to anyone for flanking, including eliminating giving thieves the ability to flank and backstab in battle.

eliminate every combat move other than swinging a weapon at someone. this means eliminating trip, grapple, and all the rest of those listed in the combat section.

lastly, give one attack per round to everyone except fighters who get 2 at 10th level.

that ought to do it. we have implemented all of those rules in our game except the one giving everyone one attack per round, and our combats are faster than most i think.

I don't think attacks of opportunity, flanking, tripping, and grappling are really the problem - and I think you could do all of them without the grid.

I don't really have an opinion on the iteritive attacks - I could take 'em or leave 'em.

 

[Roman]

Well, this has turned into quite the thread. I obviously can't comment on every post, but let me make a few points:

1. I want D&D to attract a lot of new players so there will be more gamers to sell RPGs to. When I comment on 4E's level of success or acqusition strategy, this is where I'm coming from. D&D is the gateway through which most roleplayers enter the hobby, so it's in the best of anyone selling RPGs for it to remain strong.

2. I'm not worried about 4E failing. If this thing had crashed and burned on release, that would already be apparent. Clearly it has had some success. The questions are how much, how sustainable is it, and can it grow the hobby beyond that of the third edition era?

3. Large publishers usually sell to online stores like Amazon through the book trade. That's how WotC did it when I was there and that's how GR does it too.

4. My sources were talking about 4E as a whole selling in well and then slowing down quickly. In addition to that commentary, one of them noted that new 4E supplements were selling at about the same level as latter day 3E supplements. The expectation was that the new products for a new edition would sell a lot better than books released 7-8 years into third edition.

5. Even were 4E to somehow fail, WotC would soldier on as long as Magic keeps selling. That's the real profit center of the company (Pokemon left the company 5 or so years ago). WotC's nightmare is not going out of business, but Hasbro shutting down the Renton office, laying off most of the employees, relocating a small staff of people to Rhode Island to pump out Magic sets, and hanging on to brands like D&D to use as licensing assets. Unless sales really go to hell, this is extremely unlikely.

6. I'd be careful about drawing conclusions from my original post. I've heard a few things from some interesting sources, but I don't pretend to know the full picture. The people with that info will be keeping it to themselves.

Thanks for the additional clarification. I guess I cannot help being interested in industry matters, such as sales and so on, so I always appreciate when somebody with better information than I have chimes in - even if the information is not the full picture.

 

[BryonD]

I think there is a difference between staying power and appeal to players that will buy 3PP products.

I don't think ENWorld has changed much, but I think the 4E fan base *as a whole* is different than the 3E fan base was. Thus the relatively similar ENWorld portion represents a different slice of the whole now.

I think 4E succeeded at its goal of appealing to a wider target audience. In that sense it has decent staying power.

I think that the wider and less "gamer to the core" audience is less inclined to buy supplements and far less inclined to buy non-WotC supplements. I also think that they are less likely to stay engaged long term as other new things come along. In that sense it has lesser staying power. The reality that this doesn't apply to ENWorlders in general is simply a function of how ENWorld's representation of the whole has changed. (And I'm not saying it was more representative before, just that this detail is amongst the specific differences between then and now).

IMO the game itself, as a direct function of its simplicity, will have a much more rapid been-there-done-that factor. But I don't think that impacts any trends so far.