D&D 4E Presentation vs design... vs philosophy

[Oofta]

Free form works GREAT for social, but I feel like the rules in 'Exploration' are too light for that pillar to even feel like an actual part of the game and the rules that do relate to it are SO easy to ignore. Food and water? Just be an Outlander or get some Goodberry. Light? Half the races have dark vision and Produce Flame, Create Bonfire and Light are cantrips. Encumbrance? No one cares about that.

You're down to a couple of skill checks that don't really amount to much, tension wise.

At the very least, more play examples would have been nice.

People tend to forget that darkvision is only dim light, although I've been tempted to bring back "low light" vision for a lot of races. On the other hand after the first couple of levels we always had light in previous editions as well. Although I know different people's games are different, The alternate encumbrance rule works decent but you do have to enforce it.

On the other hand I'd probably buy a "big book of options" that included a bunch of this stuff.

 

[Oofta]

Importance don’t mean rules, but time play and fun.

Then I would say that in my games all 3 pillars are well supported. I probably do a little less traditional "exploration" and more "solving a mystery" than some people would categorize it. But that goes back to what kind of story I want (and am good at) telling and what the group wants.

 

[GMMichael]

Why is this thread not in General Role-Playing?

That’s not the argument that I made. There are plenty of reasons folks didn’t like 4e, some of them related to presentation, some of them not. But the relatively positive reception of PF2 compared to 4e’s reception shows that presentation did play a significant role in a significant number of players’ problems with 4e.

"Presentation" is pretty vague. Does this mean the art, design layout, live play demos, designer interviews, number of books required, access to playtesting, or something else? The whole nine yards?

I'm not sure I agree with your clarified argument. Wouldn't PF2 and 4e have to differ -only in presentation- to come to that conclusion?

Instead: Both games focus on the encounter. Both games are obsessed with balance. Neither game really trusts the GM.

Besides, it's not that character imbalance is the crippling issue the design of 4E and PF2 think it is. Most games on the market couldn't care less about making sure that all character options are equal.

How many GMs have you met? Are they all capable of running a game without training wheels? I, for one, am comforted by the idea of an RPG that keeps the GM in check. Was that the design "philosophy" of either game in question? No idea. That does seem to be the design of the games, though.

Most games might not care about character equality, but some care about GM freedom. Fate gives points to players to buy and sell outcomes, in a way. Numenera implies that a GM can somehow "intrude" on the story. Keep an eye on those wily GMs!

 

[houser2112]

I felt it was a fine game... just not D&D

I never played 4E (I didn't have an active gaming group at the time, and my brief perusal of the PH while waiting for my wife at the mall didn't inspire me to find one to play it), but I have a friend who did play it extensively (and D&D vet going back to at least late 1E), and this is pretty much exactly what he told me when I asked him what 4E was like in actual play.

 

[Krachek]

Then I would say that in my games all 3 pillars are well supported. I probably do a little less traditional "exploration" and more "solving a mystery" than some people would categorize it. But that goes back to what kind of story I want (and am good at) telling and what the group wants.

Then maybe you have observe that the time you spend and have fun out of combat, make you less impacted by combat sharpness and challenge.

 

[Big Bucky]

Importance don’t mean rules, but time play and fun.

Emphasis is probably a better word. D&D has always been a tactical combat game at heart. The majority of the rule book is about combat. You can run a murder mystery in 5e but the rules do you no favors. There are many other rpgs that suit that play style much better.

but I think exploration and social encounters work fine in this case with less rules. Everyone ignores the encumbrance and rations rules because most people find them boring.

 

[Charlaquin]

"Presentation" is pretty vague. Does this mean the art, design layout, live play demos, designer interviews, number of books required, access to playtesting, or something else? The whole nine yards?

Its a variety of factors. My point is that many people who dislike 4e seem to be fine with many of the same mechanics popping up in PF2, just dressed up a bit differently.

I'm not sure I agree with your clarified argument. Wouldn't PF2 and 4e have to differ -only in presentation- to come to that conclusion?

Only if I was claiming that the difference in presentation was the only reason for the difference in reception. It is one reason, and I think a significant one. I think that because a lot of specific design decisions that were critiqued in 4e are also present in PF2 and not receiving the same critique. At least, not as broadly.

 

[Arilyn]

I always felt like 4E was half-baked and pushed out before it was quite done. The at-will/encounter/daily power structure was okay for some classes, I just don't think it should have been applied across the board. They tried to fix it with Essentials, but it was too little too late. Add to that the feeling that the design philosophy was to lock down everything so the system couldn't be "abused" as easily led to a mechanical feeling game.

While one of the issues I had with 3.5 was the amount of page flipping to look up specific niche rules, 4E seemed to want to lock it down even more. Even social and free-form exploration encounters became skill challenges, which sound great on paper but tended to change free form play to a series of mechanical checks with some extraneous narration.

So for me it didn't have much to do with presentation, it was the design and philosophy of the game. Toss in the lack of flexibility to change the feel of the game significantly. To me it always felt like anime/cartoon action where even my mundane fighter regularly broke all semblance of reality with their powers. You could put a veneer of different styles on the game, but it always felt the same.

Yes. Heinsoo said they were rushed and he wanted the classes to be more unique but they didn't have the time to craft each class.
13th Age shares 4e DNA but in this game all the classes are very distinct from each other. It's easy to change things, swap and reskin. I wonder what 4e would have looked like if Heinsoo and the other designers were given the time to really work on the game to their satisfaction.

 

[Charlaquin]

I never played 4E (I didn't have an active gaming group at the time, and my brief perusal of the PH while waiting for my wife at the mall didn't inspire me to find one to play it), but I have a friend who did play it extensively (and D&D vet going back to at least late 1E), and this is pretty much exactly what he told me when I asked him what 4E was like in actual play.

It was (and still is) a common sentiment. It’s also really gatekeep-y and dismissive of folks who like D&D for different reasons. What would be a far better way to express this is, “it’s a fine game, just not what I want out of D&D.” It is very clearly D&D, it’s right there in the title, and it’s exactly what many people did want out of D&D. But not what others wanted. I think if those folks expressed that more in terms of personal taste instead of setting up their idea of D&D as objective, there would be less antagonism between 4e fans and non-fans.

 

[HarbingerX]

I think an aspect of the presentation that irked people was how NAKED the design was. You could tell the design intents of 4e, see the logic behind a lot of decision. It was like turning the lights on in a Disney Dark Ride and exposing how the effects work: for some people it ruins the magic, for others its super cool and fascinating.

I think a lot of gamer didn't want to think of DnD as a 'game' and the naked design just emphasized that aspect. The books were written like a GAME and not some kind of in-universe treatise with a few D8s thrown in.

There were lots of other problems with 4e at the table for me, but this was the one that made it not feel right. I always described it like they built a great game framework, but didn't put enough onto it to hide the framework.