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

[Dominar Rygel XVI]

I've been gaming for over 30 years and started with the Moldvay Basic book. That pretty much makes me an "older player" by any metric. (Not "oldest" but certainly "older.") So please, less stereotypes.

So have I and I am going by my own personal experience. You and a few others will fall into the crowd of people who like all editions but you can't ignore that a majority of "us" found that 4th edition didn't give us what we wanted so we stayed with our older editions.

 

[Dominar Rygel XVI]

3rd Edition was pretty different from earlier editions, too - that's why I played it so much. It, too, spawned a community of older edition players. I think this point is overexaggerated somewhat.


You just said it yourself - 3E players have Pathfinder, older edition players have the OSR. I think 5E will have to appeal to every group of gamers on its own merits, and I don't think this is a bad thing.


You may well be right, but my own anecdotal evidence is a group of 8 players (including me), all over 40-something, all of whom regard 4E as the best D&D rule set there has been so far. In other words, you might be right, but I don't think any real evidence points either to that or to the reverse.

In all honesty, all you have to do is look around and you will have your evidence. If the majority of us did like 4th edition then we wouldn't be sitting here discussing the next iteration of the game.

OSR's are fun don't get me wrong, but some people feel it's time D&D was catered to them since it's been a good many years since they did.

 

[Incenjucar]

There are no actual statistics about this topic, and whatever they might be, they would be irrelevant to 5E, which differs from all editions in notable ways, so let's stop flirting with edition wars and agism, eh?

 

[Dominar Rygel XVI]

There are no actual statistics about this topic, and whatever they might be, they would be irrelevant to 5E, which differs from all editions in notable ways, so let's stop flirting with edition wars and agism, eh?

Why are you trying to make an edition war out of a legitimate discussion? I will be the first to tell you that you don't have the right to do that. We don't need statistical evidence because we have 5th edition.

 

[Balesir]

In all honesty, all you have to do is look around and you will have your evidence. If the majority of us did like 4th edition then we wouldn't be sitting here discussing the next iteration of the game.

OSR's are fun don't get me wrong, but some people feel it's time D&D was catered to them since it's been a good many years since they did.

If it's important to you to believe that you are part of a "majority" then I'm not even going to try to stop you, but I reserve the right not to be a believer, too, just because some guy on the 'net says it's so.

 

[Incenjucar]

Why are you trying to make an edition war out of a legitimate discussion? I will be the first to tell you that you don't have the right to do that. We don't need statistical evidence because we have 5th edition.

It's just speculation and anecdote.

You have no numbers.

I have no numbers.

We do know that WotC wasn't getting what they wanted, but we don't know what they wanted or why they fell short, or if it was even ever possible for them to meet their goals, and we don't know if those goals are the same for 5th edition, though we certainly know that the environment is different for 5th edition.

5E could be the most profitable edition ever and still fail, it could be the least profitable edition and succeed, or it might just get taken over by someone who thinks it's a waste of time who will junk it because they don't think it belongs in the portfolio.

 

[Obryn]

Why are you trying to make an edition war out of a legitimate discussion? I will be the first to tell you that you don't have the right to do that. We don't need statistical evidence because we have 5th edition.

You started it with the "everyone vs. 4e" thing and continued it with implying that only kids like 4e, so ...

That's the only reason we went down this line of conversation. The only one edition warring here is you. If you didn't want your opinions challenged, why did you put them on a discussion board?

 

[Quickleaf]

I thought a little more about this question.

On the one hand, I think what 5e needs to do to pull in existing gamers is pretty much the same across editions: Have a very well playtested system, write great diverse adventures, allow for a lot of character customization out of the gate but provide for players who want simpler character generation, make it easy for new DMs, finding some way to be friendly to third party stuff, etc.

On the other hand, I think 4e had some "new age" gaming ideas that were really awesome. For all the trouble DDi had/has, I can crank out customized monsters in an easy-to-run format! I also have reliable encounter building guidelines so I can fairly accurately gauge how hard a fight will be. I have a system - albeit a proptyical heavily flawed one - for adjudicating non-combat challenges. I have a unified way for evaluating traps and guidelines for their creation. As a DM I have never encountered a version of D&D so welcoming to prepare a session for. That's one of the #1 good things about 4e, how easy it is to pick up and DM (now, being a *great* DM is still as hard as it ever was, just with 4e the barrier seems less compared to other versions of D&D).

Coincidentally, the idea of attracting new DMs with an easy-to-prep/easy-to-run system really meshes well with the focus on good adventures and getting the brand recognition that 5e seems to be angled at.

I have no idea if I will like 5e more than 4e, but I am very curious to see what decisions they make about accessibility and ease of prep for DMs! I think it's a very interesting tipping point for the D&D brand that could go either way (or maybe both ways at once)!

 

[Obryn]

Yeah, two major break points for me are kind of related.

(1) Do I need to use the same rules as the players when I'm running a monster or NPC? If my NPC is a wizard, do I need to worry about all the wizardy stuff? If I do, I'm less interested.
(2) Do I get self-contained stat blocks, or do I need to reference spells and such? This is basically a deal-breaker for me.
(3) When making monsters or NPCs, what process am I using? Do I have a good set of endpoints to work from, or do I need to toolbox them from the ground up? Another dealbreaker.

 

[Incenjucar]

I agree. For me, so much comes down to ease-of-use.

As a DM: Can I run an adventure without any warning by just asking "What do you do?" and having a monster book, dice, an erasable map with markers, and a some writing materials for notes and initiative?

As a Player: Can I make something immediately interesting and effective without spending hours running through books?

I do actually spend a lot of time thinking about the worlds and characters I'm running, but I don't ever want to HAVE to do that to have a good time.