D&D 4E What can Next do to pull in 4e campaigns?

[Obryn]

How 5E can bring in 4E players:

Be Fifth Edition. The 4E players will play it or not based on their own whims and desires, which widely vary rom 4E player to 4E player. Make a solid game, and people will play it (or not).

I just wanted to pop in and agree here, but I was also hoping it would be daring or innovative in interesting ways. That simply wasn't in the cards, though, with their goals, so mostly out just has to be the best D&D at something.

I listed some must-haves above, and stuff like tactical battles isn't on my short list.

 

[Obryn]

It's not a strawman, it's a highly debatable claim that you've made. There's a major difference.

I dunno, given the number of 4e players who enjoy 13A, I don't think it's too contentious to say that not every 4e fan requires tactical combat in Next.

 

[Wulfgar76]

Presumably there are some who like it less the more they play it, but I don't see any evidence that they're a majority, or otherwise the norm. (Nor for 3E or PF.)

I'm confident in the generalization that 3e and 4e become cumbersome and tedious as the party grows in level, and I think eventually that sucks the spark out of playing.

I dove head-first into both editions when they arrived. At the beginning, low and early mid-levels, both editions were a blast - but the games both bogged down. The 3e system broke completely, and while 4e did not break, encounters became a tedious grind.

My D&D Next campaign is 7th level, and I don't see the same symptoms.
Plus DDN does not require a grid, which is huge for me.

I think there's a certain sense of fatigue that settles in eventually with any game, but I haven't hit that with 4e yet. I hit it with 3.x many years ago to where I pretty don't want to run it ever again and am very hesitant about playing it when there's so many games I'd rather play.

See I've arrived at that point with both editions.

Looking at all three (3e, 4e, 5e), Next is delivering the sort of game I want: fast, smooth, gridless.
I will concur, the tactical 'setpiece' battles of 4e can't be beat - but I'm willing to let that take a back seat to a more immersive, cinematic, simulationist game.

 

[Mistwell]

If they had a trade-in program for 4e books, where you could trade in some 4e books for a discount on 5e books, that might help bring people over

 

[pemerton]

I tend to not use the Far Realm at all, and just assume that all monsters are actually more monstrous in nature than D&D often presents them. D&D suffers, I think, from having monsters be nearly routine (especially in a dungeoncrawling environment) which, of course, makes them not really very monstrous at all. The focus on regular human villains at more levels, of course, means that I can make monsters more rare, and therefore really play them up as monsters.

This made me think about the non-human monsters that have appeared in my 4e campaign so far (5 years and 25 levels of play):

* 4 beholders (1 of them undead)

* 2 hydras

* salamanders and other fire elementals (with one of the hydras, and also summoned by a mad wizard to destroy his hometown)

* 4 dragons (1 undead)

* 2 purple worms (1 of them undead)

* a carrion crawler and 2 gelationous cubes in an ancient ruin (the closest I think my game has ever come to a Conan-esque feel)

* stirges (although ostensibly they're animals)

* 2 T-Rexes and a triceratops (ostensibly also animals)

* plenty of giant spiders of various forms (more ostensible animals)

* lots and lots of undead - in tombs, under the control of evil shamans, in the Shadowdark, in temples to Orcus, anywhere really!

* lots of demons too - generally in ancient temples or summoned by mad wizards - and some devils running fiendish errands, and also angels and starspawn

* some puck-ish types (gnomes and dark creepers)

* some genuine witches (hags from the Feywild) and lots of evil priests, cult leaders etc

* tieflings, drow, duergar and kuo-toa (which play out, ultimately, as corrupted humans)

* lots of goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, dwarves and dragonborn (which play out as variant humans, like Star Trek aliens)​

Putting together that list (from memory, so it probably has gaps) makes me suspect that I use more monsters than you! But I wouldn't say they're routine - or rather, they're routine in play, but I think not routinized in the fiction. Within the fiction the PCs are repeatedly at the edge of magical/cosmological crisis - freeing the kidnapped homesteaders from the haunted forest, stopping the rededication of an ancient demonic temple, stopping the cultists seizing control of the town, defeating the devil that is leading the invading hordes from his dark temple, defeating the vampire exarch of Orcus that destroyed the drow outpost, etc.

I don't know if that makes sense. I would imagine it's not that unusual as a way of running D&D or similar fantasy RPGs. But I do see it as a bit different from the "mega-dungeon right here beneath us in Waterdeep" approach.

 

[Sadras]

Looking at all three (3e, 4e, 5e), Next is delivering the sort of game I want: fast, smooth, gridless.
I will concur, the tactical 'setpiece' battles of 4e can't be beat - but I'm willing to let that take a back seat to a more immersive, cinematic, simulationist game.

Our last session included 1 grid-combat, PCs are 7th like yours, and it was fast and enjoyable. We even had a lengthy skill challenge which outcomes affected an important time constraint positively or negatively with PCs taking Surge Loss, Spell Lose or hp loss to part nullify the time spent if they failed on the checks as the exploration continued.
I can without doubt declare that 4e style of roleplaying can most assuredly be emulated within 5e. All that is happening is there is no power and reactive action bloat which generally slows down combat.
And on top of that one can sprinkle the adventure with Theatre of Mind encounters for the immersive, cinematic, simulationist feel.

If they had a trade-in program for 4e books, where you could trade in some 4e books for a discount on 5e books, that might help bring people over

Cheeky!

 

[Primal]

I'm sure there are people playing 4e although they don't like it as much as they would like to.

The other generalisation, though, certainly doesn't apply in my case - in fact, the more I run 4e the more I see some of its strengths - although of course its weakness also remain evident.

Presumably there are some who like it less the more they play it, but I don't see any evidence that they're a majority, or otherwise the norm. (Nor for 3E or PF.)

Heh, same for me!

I can't speak for everyone, but I haven't tired of GMing Pathfinder yet, even though my campaign has hit high levels a while ago (and we're also using Mythic Rules on top of that). I also play in several PF groups, and enjoy it just as much as GMing. Everyone in those groups does, and nobody wants to switch to DDN. We did take a look at those playtest documents, but it just didn't seem like our cup of tea, so to speak.

I'd love to play 4E, but I don't know any local 4E groups (I moved across the country a couple of years ago). Yet I doubt local 4E fans are any more enthustiastic to embrace DDN than PF fans (I know a few 4E fans in my former hometown, and I know they aren't, at least).

I know that this is all anecdotal and whatnot, but I don't think DDN will be a commercial success over here...

 

[Mournblade94]

My problem here is that D&D Next isn't even close to Dungeon World at any of those three things and 13th Age leaves it looking half-baked at two of them - and that's only when we stay under the D&D umbrella. A game that measures areas of effect in feet is not good at theater of the mind at all.

That would be because D&D NEXT IS half baked. It is not out of the oven yet. It is not yet complete. 13th age is complete. I have used theatre of the mind for most of my games, and I measure in feet.

Another trope is things man was not meant to know. Which is why I loved the 4e ritual/ordinary breakdown. You learned the rituals.

So then why was man able to learn the rituals? There really is no difference from learning spells man was not meant to know.

Finding the spell and finding the ritual are the exact same thing.

So tell me. How do we measure the fireball? By radius, or by volume? Will it melt lead things the PCs are carrying, and if so how? We all know what a burst of fire looks like - but fireball itself has been paved over with layers of D&D cruft that means that it's actively harder to work out what a fireball is than what a ball of fire is.

Rather easy actually (4/3)*pi*r^2.

Inside Fireball would work out to 1675 cubic feet.

Outside would work out to 3770 cubic feet.

If the character fails the save their equiptment could also be damaged in 2nd edition. If you had to do it you could use the material strengths in the 3rd edition guide.

Given that Monster Vault fires the 2e Monstrous Manual for "Best plot hook official D&D monster manual ever" and Nentir Vale then slams the door behind the 2e MM, I'd agree. Then I'd point out that 4e has all this in spades.

I have to strongly disagree here. The 4e lore, and I have Nentir vale cannot hold a candle to the 2nd edition well thought out lore. There is simply more fidelity to the 2nd edition lore than the 4e lore.

Nentir vale was most useful for their monster counters. The 2nd edition monster manual provided reams more monsters and more material.

I actually find the 2e lore really frustrating and pointless compared to the 4e lore. It comes with such an absurdly strong implied setting that there are few campaigns I can use it in at all. Unlike the 4e monster lore, which is dedicated to plot hooks and what the monsters motivations are.

Yes the 2nd edition lore was rich. The 4e lore was rather bland. This is like saying a CRT tv is better because all of the detail of an HD Tv is frustrating. 2nd edition lore was superior both in thought and writing.

 

[pemerton]

The 4e lore, and I have Nentir vale cannot hold a candle to the 2nd edition well thought out lore

<snip>

The 2nd edition monster manual provided reams more monsters and more material.

<snip>

2nd edition lore was superior both in thought and writing.

Over the course of these recurring comparisons I have read many 2nd ed AD&D Monstrous Manual entries, and I have never been impressed by them. I find them poorly formatted with unintuitive headings, and to my mind they obsess over information that is irrelevant to me (eg how do aboleths procreate) and lack information that is helpful to me (eg how do aboleths fit into the mythic history of the gameworld).

On the writing itself, I tend to find all D&D writing a bit overwrought. The only one that I would really recommend for style is Moldvay's Basic. But I find the 4e Monster Manual and MM2 suitably terse. (The MM3 and MVs have too much overwriting for my taste, though I will not the Wandering Tower as an honourable exception, where the writing actually works well.)

Rather easy actually (4/3)*pi*r^2.

Inside Fireball would work out to 1675 cubic feet.

Outside would work out to 3770 cubic feet.

I think you mean (4/3)*pi*r^3.

So the volume of a 20' R fireball = 4*8000*pi/3. For simplicity let's say that pi/3=1. Then the volume is about 32000 cubic feet.

(Your actual calculation also seems to be based on a 30' R fireball: 4*30*30 = 3600. I think a fireball has been 20' R in all versions of D&D except for 4e, where it fills a 35' x 35' square, presumably as a concession (i) to the definition of blast attacks in that edition, and (ii) to the fact that a 20'R sphere can't be perfectly mapped to a cubic AoE. The area of the 4e fireball is actually very similar to that of the traditional one at its centre: 1225 compared to a little short of 1257 sq feet. But the volume of the 4e one is 42875 cubic feet, somewhat bigger than is traditional.)

 

[dd.stevenson]

Over the course of these recurring comparisons I have read many 2nd ed AD&D Monstrous Manual entries, and I have never been impressed by them. I find them poorly formatted with unintuitive headings, and to my mind they obsess over information that is irrelevant to me (eg how do aboleths procreate) and lack information that is helpful to me (eg how do aboleths fit into the mythic history of the gameworld). (snip)

I can confirm that the format and headings are pretty frustrating for me too. And I agree that they would have done better to include some mythic information--I've felt that lack keenly since I switched to 2E.

But I've never, ever wished for less of the sociological or ecological info. That stuff is the bread and butter of my sandbox game, and I'll be disappointed if 5E doesn't include it. (Though--if they choose to reformat it, and maybe start thinking more in terms of how this information supports the monster's theme, that would be an improvement in my opinion.)