D&D 4E Ron Edwards on D&D 4e

[S'mon]

Also, whereas the combat encounter section is excellent from a mechanical point of view, and - contrary to widespread opinion - I think the skill challenge section is not bad, the section on adventure design is awful.

In the combat encounter section there is no discussion of theme or story from the metagame perspective. All that is found in the W&M prequel. The only bit of the DMG that really compares to this in tone is the section on languages. I think a lot of that W&M stuff could have been dropped into the DMG whole-cloth and made it quite a bit better.

Agree 100% - it's insane that W&M has so much vital thematic stuff that got cut from the 4e DMG. I remember comparing the Planes section from the DMG to the same in W&M and going WTF?!?! - W&M had far more & better info!!

 

[S'mon]

Re 4e Skill numbers vs Combat numbers. The former go up roughly 3/4 by level, the latter roughly 1/1 by level. This is some really painful math to try to fix! I'm not sure how big a problem it really is though. The difference is small enough, and skill numbers start 2-3 points higher, that the difference is only really visible in upper Epic Tier. And even there I found that 42 makes a good capstone target number for both monster AC & NADs (it's the standard AC & NAD of a Level 30 Brute) and for Skill DCs. A level 30 PC without too many temporary buffs is probably attacking at ca +36 to hit, and their higher skill bonuses something like 10+(30x.75=)22 = 32. (edit for a math mistake - I forgot that the 3/4 includes ASIs etc).

So skill bonus starts off around 3 ahead of attack bonus at level 1, and ends around 4 behind attack bonus at level 30.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You know, as I am remembering it, the comparison he makes to Greyhawk is more along the lines of the piecemeal way both settings were published. Bits here and bits there in various books and magazines. Contradictory themes and elements. That sort of thing, rather than the underlying story worlds of each setting.

Well, as I remember it, Greyhawk was hinted at in various ways, but GARY didn't reveal squat about it, until the first WoG product was released. Sure, in some circles I'm sure there was a lot of passed-on info, as a lot of people played in Gary's group, or with people that had knowledge of Greyhawk. Also it was at least partially derived from the C&C Society Great Kingdom campaign setting which they used for wargames (and which I presume was significantly formulated by Gary too). I don't recall Dragon articles about it pre-WoG either, except some previews maybe (I'm not going to dig out my Dragon collection to try to research that). There were a lot of articles AFTER it was published that fleshed out the pantheon and whatnot (Roger Moore IIRC wrote a lot of that stuff).

But IME WoG itself was sort of a bolt out of the blue in terms of Greyhawk was just a mythical origin campaign about which nothing was known except a few spell-caster's names that appeared on spells, and a few NPCs that had artifacts and such named for them. Maybe you could glean a bit here or there from modules that MIGHT be suggestive of the origin campaign. But in terms of its form, that was entirely something brand new to the world with Darcy's map. It also covered the entirety of the campaign world from day one. There was nothing really added later, we just got details filled in specifically for spots where some action happened.

PoLand OTOH really didn't exist, even after the publication of the core 3 books, etc. It only slowly took shape. All we had was the Nentir Vale, and some names, Nerath, Bael Turath, Arcosia, and the cosmological structure it fit into. We only finally even got a 'world' map years later when the board game was published. Amusingly the canon is not coherent in a lot of spots either. There are a couple of different versions of the fall of Nerath for instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Also, whereas the combat encounter section is excellent from a mechanical point of view, and - contrary to widespread opinion - I think the skill challenge section is not bad, the section on adventure design is awful.

In the combat encounter section there is no discussion of theme or story from the metagame perspective. All that is found in the W&M prequel. The only bit of the DMG that really compares to this in tone is the section on languages. I think a lot of that W&M stuff could have been dropped into the DMG whole-cloth and made it quite a bit better.

I don't think I'm alone in believing that DMG1, though actually a quite good book in many respects, was more a rough draft than a finished product. I think someone came to James and basically said, "Welp, you got 3 months to whip this thing into shape!" and they did the best they could. Some sections don't seem to be quite built on the same numbers as the rest, or they were hastily revised, the various sections of advice and explanation of process of play are somewhat incoherent and often seem to serve the agenda of a different game. Some of this might also be politics, some higher ups came back and rejected the more coherent text and mandated including more traditional 'dungeon stuff' or something. Some sections were simply written in great haste and needed a full rewrite, etc. The editing pass that happened at the end of that was technically solid, so it kind of hangs together and its reasonably well organized, but DMG2 is a much better book, overall. Had DMG1 been equally strong in its explanation of 4e as story game, then at least people might have understood how to play SCs and what the point of all that was.

What I never understood was how Mearls is both so versed in things like Forge discussions of story in game, and yet was so massively out of touch with 4e as a game. As an advocate for the game my feeling is he was totally the wrong person, he either didn't grasp, or thoroughly did not believe in, the game. Putting him in charge was a very bad idea. I don't know any of these guys, so I can't say which one would have actually been capable, organizationally, of filling that role but Heinsoo, Wyatt, almost any of them, would have had to have been better choices.

 

[S'mon]

What I never understood was how Mearls is both so versed in things like Forge discussions of story in game, and yet was so massively out of touch with 4e as a game. As an advocate for the game my feeling is he was totally the wrong person, he either didn't grasp, or thoroughly did not believe in, the game. Putting him in charge was a very bad idea. I don't know any of these guys, so I can't say which one would have actually been capable, organizationally, of filling that role but Heinsoo, Wyatt, almost any of them, would have had to have been better choices.

I'd guess Heinsoo, Wyatt seems more of a board game guy. And he's responsible for most of the worst lines in the previews ("D&D is not a game about traipsing through fairy rings and interacting with the little people") and the DMG - remember this The Guards at the Gate Quote ?

Edit: And the one time I inadvertently created a Meme The Guards at the Gate Quote

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

Sure. But the reverse is true too - that someone's game sucked doesn't show that mine did. And it also doesn't meant that I was doing the same thing as them but just don't get bored when they do.

When a group of posters - me, @Manbearcat, @AbdulAlhazred, @Campbell are some of them active in this thead, and back in the day there were others, and it seems Ron Edwards is from the same school - converge without colluding on the same understanding of 4e and how and why it works, that suggests that it's more than just wild idiosyncracy or arbitrary differences in taste that meant some of us got great games out of it.

I think Edwards's comparison to early Champions - not a game I ever played, but I have a bit of a sense of it - is a pretty interesting one.

4e is a very well-designed game for its purpose. I am actually envious of its functionality and wish its design competence had been translated to 5e; the relative sloppiness of 5e mechanics is something of an embarrassment for a game developed on the heels of 4e with a considerable playtest period. I recognize that 4e's design isn't for my tastes despite the overall technical skill displayed in the game (toward the end of its lifespan vs. the beginning, at the very least, and disregarding skill challenges entirely).

My grievance with the related comment was not to disregard your experiences with the system, only to remark that most RPG experiences depend on the players and GM, regardless of system quality. A solid system can provide foundational support, but inter-group variance is high. Always there are these D&D (and other tradgame) players who claim they've played whole sessions without rolling dice. That's nice and all, but it doesn't change that the game itself is largely a combat engine with some notes about roleplaying tacked on--which I feel very strongly pertains to 4e and, to a (marginally lesser) degree, all iterations of D&D.

 

[Garthanos]

PoLand OTOH really didn't exist, even after the publication of the core 3 books, etc. It only slowly took shape. All we had was the Nentir Vale, and some names, Nerath, Bael Turath, Arcosia, and the cosmological structure it fit into. We only finally even got a 'world' map years later when the board game was published. Amusingly the canon is not coherent in a lot of spots either. There are a couple of different versions of the fall of Nerath for instance.

The difference between not existing and only getting hints and bits... is not too big

 

[cavalier973]

The difference between not existing and only getting hints and bits... is not too big

Hints and bits were the only thing really needed, because, as the DMG stated, “It’s your world”.

A few ideas to get you started. That is all PoLand was supposed to be; it was all it needed to be. But those hints and bits are wholly awesome, in my point of view.

Addendum: Matt Colville has a video called “The sandbox versus the Railroad”. In it, he describes a DM laying out a map in front of his players. They start excitedly asking questions.

“What’s that place?”

“That’s an elven stronghold.”

“Ooh! What is this woods?”

“That’s a haunted forest. Who knows what’s in there.”

“Look at this! A dragon!”

“Oh, that place is famous. It used to be a dwarven citadel, but it got wiped out by that dragon.”

That is what Nentir Vale is like to me, when I look at the map, and read the descriptions in the DMG. It is a place with all sorts of potential adventure sites, scattered across the hills and plains and woodlands.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd guess Heinsoo, Wyatt seems more of a board game guy. And he's responsible for most of the worst lines in the previews ("D&D is not a game about traipsing through fairy rings and interacting with the little people") and the DMG - remember this The Guards at the Gate Quote ?

Edit: And the one time I inadvertently created a Meme The Guards at the Gate Quote

I'm with @GSHamster on that one, I have not a single clue why anyone objects to that quote. Its really a comment about PACING and FOCUS. If the guards at the gate are something relevant to the players, if they are more than just "Of course there will be guards, its a gate!" then just blowing past them might not be so cool. Then again, for pacing reasons they STILL might be a minor issue that is resolved in one check of an SC, and that would be perfectly fine. If NOTHING AT ALL IS AT STAKE then interacting with the guards beyond noting that you passed through and they were there, would make no sense at all, particularly in a scene-based game. This is, again, why HoML no longer has 'stand-alone checks' and anything without stakes in diceless interlude explicitly. James is welcome at my table any day of the week!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hints and bits were the only thing really needed, because, as the DMG stated, “It’s your world”.

A few ideas to get you started. That is all PoLand was supposed to be; it was all it needed to be. But those hints and bits are wholly awesome, in my point of view.

Addendum: Matt Colville has a video called “The sandbox versus the Railroad”. In it, he describes a DM laying out a map in front of his players. They start excitedly asking questions.

“What’s that place?”

“That’s an elven stronghold.”

“Ooh! What is this woods?”

“That’s a haunted forest. Who knows what’s in there.”

“Look at this! A dragon!”

“Oh, that place is famous. It used to be a dwarven citadel, but it got wiped out by that dragon.”

That is what Nentir Vale is like to me, when I look at the map, and read the descriptions in the DMG. It is a place with all sorts of potential adventure sites, scattered across the hills and plains and woodlands.

Right, it was definitely aimed at that, though it did grow a bit in the sense of extending to a whole world by the end. WotC didn't spend a lot of energy on that though, they gave details, but few overviews. In that sense WoG is very different, as it primarily existed in its early days as a map and a pretty thin book. The map covers an area larger than Western Europe, and each nation gets a paragraph, maybe three. It is definitely a 'fill in the blanks' kind of place, but not so much of a local region where you'd likely go off the map.