D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[cbwjm]

I've always felt 4e would have lasted longer had it started with essentials.

 

[Micah Sweet]

TBF, one of the major, talked up, goals of the Next playtest was the Big Tent. 5e was meant to be D&D for everyone who ever loved D&D, and for new players, too.

You're right, there are games for every taste, now - and, there were then, too. 3.5 fans had PF1, old school fans had long had Hackmaster and the OSR was underway, and D&D fans with the temerity to want balance still had 4e.
Really, the hobby has been niche AF since the 90s.
But, for whatever reason, 11 years ago, it was absolutely vital that the Next D&D be for absolutely everyone.

Even so, continuing to make the tent bigger and bigger is, IMO, making the game worse and preventing it from being good at anything.

 

[Oofta]

No edition of D&D is an objectively good game. 4e was the least imbalanced, with the narrowest martial/caster gap, easiest to DM (embarrassingly easy, I've always said), and so forth. Like 1e, it tried to be better.

4e might have survived longer, or at least not gotten the essentials treatment, were not for the edition warring against it, virtually all of wich could be viewed as objections to it being balanced. (More subjectively, to the way it was balanced, how not-D&D that felt.)

More of a dumpster fire. Trash is just boring. Dumpster fires can be very entertaining - hard to look away from, even. Plus you can warm your hands over them.

Seriously, tho, D&D isn't perfect, it has had many, many flaws over the decades. But that can't stop us from having fun with it.

You can enjoy a less than perfect game, even a terrible game, you can like, even love it, in spite of its flaws. You can love it for its flaws. That's all subjective, yes, but it's all legitimate.

The editing for D&D is decent, rules are reasonably consistent, there's been minimal errata. Beyond that? The game being good or bad is not objective.

As far as 4E, I have my complaints but the game being balanced was never one I considered or ever heard of.

 

[Minigiant]

So your issue is that the classes that you want are:

• not there during your play experiences
• not strong enough in all three pillars
• not in existence
• not correctly aligned with their race? (I see races in there and am unsure what to make of it.)

Are these four things an accurate picture, or am I missing something?

My issue is that descriptions of stuff in the game don't match the mechanics of the game.

And a lot of the community is resistant to making them match.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is an interesting insight into 4e. Thanks for sharing. On a side note, I always liked 4e, but it is true, it did not "feel" like D&D.

I was skeptical of it from the beginning, and dropped it after playing and running for about less than two years, but I admit it was a well-designed game for someone who isn't me.

 

[Krachek]

We are playing a social entertaining game, so each player is equally important around the table and so are the PCs.

 

[Minigiant]

This is an interesting insight into 4e. Thanks for sharing. On a side note, I always liked 4e, but it is true, it did not "feel" like D&D.

4e more or less said "I'm going to make the descriptions and mechanics match. Tradition be damned."

That's why some loved it and some hated it.

It openly said "I support This and I don't support That. Getting This to work is more important than including That in my game right now. If you are willing to wait, I might get to That in a few years".

 

[Oofta]

I've always felt 4e would have lasted longer had it started with essentials.

It was definitely rushed into production, the entire power structure was never intended to be applied to every class.

Water under the bridge now of course. I do think one part of 5E's success (there are many) is the extensive play testing and feedback period.

Tying that back to the thread topic while they brought some aspects of 4E forward warlords were not popular enough to be included.

 

[Minigiant]

Tying that back to the thread topic while they brought some aspects of 4E forward warlords were not popular enough to be included.

That is incorrect.

Warlords aren't in 5e because WOTC took a stance that new classes would only be created if the setting demands it.
They attempted to fold it into the fighter, hoping 4e fans would be happy. But like I said way in the beginning, there wasn''t enough design space in the battlemaster to please anyone.

That's why only artificers are official. Psions was coming with Dark Sun but WOTC dropped Dark Sun so they stopped with the difficult development of it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Even so, continuing to make the tent bigger and bigger is, IMO, making the game worse and preventing it from being good at anything.

5e didn't really deliver on that goal, anyway. Fans of psionics & warlords, obviously, are still outside the tent, and in a way, 3e fans have had standing tent space only, since that ed's premier innovations, feats & modular MCing, are both optional (they'll be1st class tentizens come 5e.2024, it seems), and I don't have to tell you how some TSR fans feel.
But the expectation has been established (For that matter there may be a perception that since 5e has been commercially successful, it must have succeeded at the Big Tent goal.)

The real success of 5e in that Tent sense isn't pleasing everyone, it's just not offending anyone enough to start Edition War II. That's all it needs to avoid damaging the IP, and keep leveraging its only-TTRPG-the-mainstream-knows-exists status. That probably doesn't require an ever bigger tent - or a worse (or better) game.

(thus, of course, this thread is an exercise in futility).
(sorry, original poster)