The Nature of Change (or, Understanding Edition Wars)

[pawsplay]

Which, then, should I be paying attention to?

I certainly wouldn't presume to summarize the whole thread. But what I see as cardinal to this discussion is that the OP presumes, as others have before, to explain resistance to 4e in terms of psychology rather than the content of 4e itself. I believe that is simply wrong. There are probably those who exhibit irrational resistance, but I do not think they are the heart of the ongoing tension. Partisanship is simply not that interesting. While someone could label the debates as post hoc defenses of opinions already formed, that is not my impression.

I believe that most 4e resistors are motivated more by perceived loss than actual resistance. Loss of publication and development, loss of being the WotC flagship game, loss of new players, loss of the third party market. Most importantly, loss of being the target demographic. Many people have found that things were "fixed" that they preferred as they were.

If ENWorld really wants to come to peacable terms, it will have to be accepted that the 3e/4e rift is permanent and irrenconciliable. That is not to say that people cannot be friends or that you cannot play and enjoy both, simply that there are two significant fan bases that are not going to merge. It is not simply going to blow over. I remember many people boasting that everyone would change over to 4e, eventually, just as everyone left AD&D behind for 3e.... I believe that is just not going to be the case.

That puts ENWorld in an interesting position. A fanbase that was before fairly united now has two factions that exist for more than arbitrary reasons. Some people will not be switching to 4e. Ever. If the site remains friendly, no problem. Everyone benefits from the shared enthusiasm for gaming. But if it turns into endless sniping, one side will eventually find itself in the weaker position, and will likely move on to other sites. Most likely, that means 3e gaming will head elsewhere.

I think that would be a real poverty for the 4e fans. Other 4e enthusiasts are likely to have similar thoughts about gaming. But players who prefer 3e or other games entirely are fairly likely to bring a different set of preferences to the table, which brings with it different approaches to gaming.

It would be a big hassle for the 3e players, too. I don't know anywhere on the net I'd consider equal to ENworld in terms of traffic and quality of the posts for third edition gaming.

To bring it around... while the OP may have been intended as interested musing on the edition shift, it reads as saying people who don't want to play 4e are irrationally resisting. Furthermore, it implies that people who resist 5e will be irrational, too.

I feel that there is such a thing as good game design. The result is not something you can meausre with a stick, or vote on, or compare sales figures for. But there is an art, and each game makes tradeoffs in order to best accomplish its goals. Some games are more successful than others.

It is not necessary to argue 3e or 4e is better in order to simply argue they are significantly different and that there are reasons to prefer one to the other. That's a topic I consider germane to this website. Baseless conjecture flying under the banner of marketing conventional wisdom is not really helpful to gamers.

Every post that says, "Yes, there is a reason to love your favorite game," helps ENWorld be a better place. Every post that says, "You prefer your favorite edition because you are a drone," makes it a worse place.

 

[RFisher]

I don’t think I’m the only one who keeps coming back here for reasons other than 3e, d20, or 4e.

 

[Spatula]

Modules? A completely different animal from a well judged campaign to be sure.

Game supplements written by the game's author are incompatible with a "well judged campaign"? Anyway, the point is that 3e wasn't a break with tradition in terms of the commonality of magic items, it was going back to 1e.

Technically correct but a "disincentive" without an acceptable explanation is customarily known as BS to a lot of people.

There's loads of BS in D&D, and always has been. The dual-classing rules in 1e. Multi-classing not being available to humans. Level limits. No one but humans and half-humans being to take the clerics class. etc. etc.

Its nothing to do with gameplay or balance, or really mechanics at all. Its all about feel.

A feel that has nothing to do with MMOs. You could fail at crafting items in UO, EQ, and possibly other online games as well.

Whats even more amazing is the assumtion that such information could only be learned from mind reading.

Yes, retraining rules could be used to powergame. Any player option can be used to powergame. Some players find fun in that, and if that's what they & their group enjoy, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong. Some players use options to try and find a better expression for their character. The shift from cookie-cutter disposable heroes in the early days of D&D, to highly customized characters that are expected to stick around for long periods of time, has necessitated that their be some allowance for players to be happy with the choices they make for their character. Experienced & decent DMs will say, "It's alright, go ahead and change it" but newbie DMs will not necessarily get that. The retraining rules let everyone know that if you make a bad choice, you don't have it dragging your character down for the months (and possibly years) ahead.

 

[jensun]

The problems with feel and genre confusion would be present and it wouldn't matter if that happened now or another 10 years from now. Despite what the OP of this thread is asserting, there are some gamers that want to play sword and sorcery fantasy and not supers fantasy and the passage of time will see them playing other games rather than playing something that they don't want.

Really?

Because i am finding it significantly easier to run a Sword and Sorcery Elric/Conan inspired game in 4e currently than I ever did with 3e.

Past about level 8 3e too easily resembles caped crusaders.

 

[Korgoth]

On my WOW digression (which we can leave aside if folks prefer, since it is a digression), people have pointed out that some of the WOWish elements (retraining, disenchanting, etc.) were also elements of the latter days of 3.5. I probably bailed on 3.5 before many or most of those were introduced, so they're not really on my radar.

Unlike a lot of people who don't find 4E to be very much like what they consider to be D&D, I also don't care for 3E. Now, 3E (core) seems more like D&D than 4E... I'd say (personal estimation, here) that 4E is really a new game that's merely named D&D. I still think 3E is D&D, although it diverts from and even inverts some of the core assumptions in ways that I feel make it not worth playing.

I still think that if 4E had been marketed not as "D&D" but as something like "Dungeons and Dragons Presents: Worlds of BattleArtifice" or "Dungeons & Dragons Legends" or something like that, people would be less annoyed. They could have left the core of 3E in print in some form if they wanted (some people are pretty into that, though it doesn't matter to me).

Consumers like options. At one point from TSR you could D&D in the 1974 white box (OCE), the blue Holmes book, the Moldvay magenta and cyan boxes and the AD&D hardcovers. And this is when the popularity of the game was surging. Heck, I'd like it if they'd reprint OD&D 1974 right now... all the easier for me to recruit players to my games.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The New Coke analogy works for what I've seen it used (other then a few snarky lines) on this discussion for. Discussing the effects of flawed market research running into issues of brand and personal identity. Whether or not and ,if so, to what degree WotC's market research during the development of 4e was flawed is impossible to say without seeing it. It appears some parts of it was based upon the apparent (albeit mostly anecdotal) size and strength of the reaction people have to the result. That both products are running into problems with consumers identity of themselves and the product is accurate. That both are largely facing dislike over intangables is accurate.

I think its more fair to say that there wasn't a flaw in WotC's research, but there may have been a flaw in its interpretation. And, like New Coke, that flawed conclusion may have been undetectable until 4Ed was released into the marketplace as a replacement to 3Ed.

(OTOH, even without access to WotC's data, I was raising the NC comparison on this site while we were still getting the occasional preview of the game- that is, before it had actually hit the market. I can't have been the only one to have similar misgivings.)

The difference, as I see it, is that you like the changes from 2e to 3e more than you like the changes from 3e to 4e, which makes the 3e-4e changes seem far more radical.

That 3Ed was as radical a change from 2Ed as 4Ed was from 3Ed I find to be non-controversial.

The differences between the transitions, though, are crucial:

1) WotC tried to make it possible to transition 2Ed PCs and campaigns into 3Ed campaigns with as little pain as possible, even going so far as to publishing a conversion manual (of which I own 2). With 4Ed, we were told conversions were essentially a waste of time, and that starting anew would be preferable. This means that those of us who had campaigns dating back many years (like mine which started in the 1980s) were essentially given a date certain after which those campaigns would no longer be supported by the new version of the game.

2) 3Ed changes were largely mechanical, not fluff, and the mechanical changes were, by and large significantly positive changes to the earlier editions. The math, for instance, became much more intuitive.

3Ed didn't touch the fluff by excising classes or races. It didn't alter the cosmology significantly. Instead, it was about expanding possibilities- hence, the elvish paladins and more open multiclassing structure.

In contrast, the mechanical differences weren't inherently superior, just different. Racial or Class options that existed in the 3Ed PHB were gone. The alignment system was truncated (and in an oddly unbalanced fashion).

3) 3Ed was all about freeing up character options. Within a small set of restrictions, you could have your PC of any race have any combination of any classes...even if it was mechanically sub-optimal. The designers of 3Ed trusted the DMs and players to be able to design fun PCs and campaigns.

4Ed's design favoring a mechanical preference for balance is inherently more restrictive. A sub-optimal PC is much less possible. The 4Ed designers tightening of PC design restrictions (especially in multiclassing) amounts to a lack of trust in player decisions.

IOW, whereas in the 3Ed transition, WotC tried to ensure backwards compatibility, maintained many thematic touchstones of the game's previous incarnations, and expanded options within the Core releases as compared to its predecessor, 4Ed was decidedly NOT backwards compatible, killed or maimed many sacred cows, and reduced Core options as compared to 3Ed.

Obviously, that didn't sit well for many.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But the question I have to ask is, were they really still on WoTC's train (or planning to stay on much longer?)

I can't speak for everyone, but I was.

I purchased most (but not all) of the 3Ed and 3.5Ed products, and I pre-ordered my Core 3 4Ed books. I had ZERO intent on "exiting" WotC's train.

Then I got to see the train...exit, stage left.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

[...] I pre-ordered my Core 3 4Ed books. I had ZERO intent on "exiting" WotC's train.

Then I got to see the train...exit, stage left.

Me, too.

I had more warning that I was losing my Amtrak ride than most, because the DDM 2.0 rules were released so much earlier than 4E. But even then, I was thinking (and saying) things like, "Hey, maybe these rules are simplified for miniatures play. That would make sense. These can't really be what they intend for 4E."

I'd still be buying 3.5 stuff, or I would have become a 4E completist ... if 4E were different.

 

[Spatula]

4Ed's design favoring a mechanical preference for balance is inherently more restrictive. A sub-optimal PC is much less possible. The 4Ed designers tightening of PC design restrictions (especially in multiclassing) amounts to a lack of trust in player decisions.

Removing options that are actually hidden traps is positive advancement, IMO. Your viewpoint on this is probably going to be colored by who you game with - if your group is all people who like reading game rulebooks in their free time, putting those hidden traps into the game is fine (note: such people are not the norm). As someone who games with a few low-information players who just want to sit down at the table once a week and have fun roleplaying & killing stuff, the myriad of actively harmful 3e character options is a minefield and a headache.

 

[Ydars]

I posted this in another thread but thought it was relevant to the discussion of why 4E sometimes feels like WOW or other videogames and why this doesn't work for a PnP RPG.

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The problem with defining a "feel" as in "videogame feel", is that the person actually experiencing that feeling is not always aware of what particular set of stimuli has triggered that reaction. So defining it becomes a game of cat and mouse with your own unconscious. Add in twelve people on ENworld telling you, " you're wrong and you have the ingredients for a flame-war.

Also, to those of you like TwinBahamat, who feel that the comment "too videogamey" is negative to video games, I would say this. Some computer RPG conventions are NOT appropriate for porting into PnP based RPGs. They are fine in a computer game but don't belong in some people's PnP games and here is why I think this is the case.

A computer game is essentially an audio-visual experience, it does not happen primarily in the imagination. This is why we can accept many conventions like complete healing after a short rest, daily powers, etc that bother many people about 4E. The audio-visual cues, in a CRPG, are stimulating enough that they allow us to get past any feelings of disbelief so that we are still immersed in the world/story. Essentially what we are seeing is overiding our own internal sense of the world and reinforcing the game world.

In a PnP based game, the imagination is where the action happens for many people and in this type of game any "flag of disbelief" is much more serious. The pictures and feelings are being formed from cues in the unconscious mind so it can literally ruin the atmosphere if something doesn't "feel" right. You can't start logical arguments with your unconscious and so the feeling of the game becomes all important in a PnP RPG where vermisilitude has to be a vital component of the game.

The disageements about 4E probably arise because, for many people, imagination is NOT where the D&D primarily happens for them. These kinds of people tend to be strategically or tactically involved in the game and love the combat most of all. They use battlegrids and view the whole game as about killing things and winning. Their imagination only happens in short flashes and then they are back to planning their next tactic. This style IMHO goes back to Gygax himself, as it seems to me that his games ran this way.

I like both types of games but feel that the true potential of PnP RPGs lies in the use of the imagination; after all, no computer yet has one. So when I say D&D is becoming too video-gamey I mean that elements of the 4E mechanics, ported from video games for reasons of game balance or playability, are intruding into the narrative/storytelling aspect of the game and ruining my suspension of disbelief.