What is missing from 4E

[I'm A Banana]

So, someone hates the Warlord class, and thinks it's completely out of his idea of what D&D is. That person has two possible ways of dealing with it:

A) Posting message after message on a random D&D forum stating how infuriated he is that the Warlord class is ruining D&D to him.

B) Deciding not to use the Warlord class in his games.

Eh. A lot of the reason we were told that some things changed in 4e from the way they were in 3e was because "people complained" and "WotC listened." Some people didn't like those changes, and the message was basically "so complain, and we'll listen."

Ranting on the internet now has some vague Word of God-style approval!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Simulationism and D&D became important to me when 3E's misguided attempt at pretending to be simulationist gummed up the works of playing the game with all its fiddly subsystems and rules for everything. I played 2E without simulationism, I played 3E, and I'm now happy D&D is back to where it should be. I have also played two years of Rolemaster, as the DM no less, so I'm no stranger to simulationism, and no enemy of it. It just doesn't really belong in D&D.

D&D is gamist. 4E has often used a narrativist justification for things where 3E used simulationist justification before. While I would call 2E the most narrativist of all editions of D&D, its still primarily gamist.

I agree, D&D always seemed to be to bring in simulationism after the fact. Simulationist subsystems kept being tacked on to the core D&D mechanics culminating with 3rd edition and its rules for every thing. That and the fact that by that time everyone who played D&D had worked up a personal concept of how D&D mechanics worked that a lot of people were perfectly happy to call it simulationism.

 

[Betote]

Eh. A lot of the reason we were told that some things changed in 4e from the way they were in 3e was because "people complained" and "WotC listened." Some people didn't like those changes, and the message was basically "so complain, and we'll listen."

Ranting on the internet now has some vague Word of God-style approval!

Call me a cynic, but I've always seen 4e's main reason to exist "there are too many people (who are not us) selling our game", so they had to change the core in order to be incompatible with previous non-wotc content, while at the same time changing the conditions to publish for it. 4e is to prevent more Paizo or Mutants & Masterminds cases.

Of course, it would be Evil Stupid to change things for the worse, so I have no doubt WotC's designers tried to make the best game possible that'd be still recognizable as D&D.

But let's not forget the RPG market is that, a market. If you rant about how I screwed your childhood fantasies with my game, but buy every supplement I publish nevertheless, your vote counts as much as zero. Same way, if you love edition X and don't plan to buy any book for it, you are not "supporting" that edition, no matter how vehemently you claim to do on some internet message board.

"I hate 4e. It's the worst game ever. Every supplement (which I bought) is worse than the previous, and I'll buy every further supplements they publish just to see how awfully written designed and conceived they are. With 3e I just bought the core books and never needed anything else, and it was way better than 4e" means to WotC: "you're doing it right"

 

[jasin]

It doesn't support the kind of heroes we read about in novels, though. They help each other, but can fight just as well alone. A D&D party is not a military unit, until now. Conan, Pug, and other lone wolves wouldn't feel comfortable in 4E.

And they would in 3E? A fighter without a healer to back him up? A rogue without someone to flank with? A bard without a party to buff?

D&D isn't a "go team!", "and I'll form the head!" type game,

It isn't?

because it's against type - fantasy heroes aren't about that for the most part. I'm suprised some people seem to think it is. It's just another gamist alienation of D&D away from the genre it supposedly is supposed to convey.

If you think that fantasy heroics are about loners being awesome rather than teamwork to bring about the awesome, aren't you betraying that conceit of the genre the moment you sit down to play with four other people?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Yep, D&D has - in every edition - modelled fantasy-fiction-in-action (i.e., 'writing a genre story as you go') *extremely* poorly.

It is definitely a 'team' game, or at the very least, a *group* game. Sure, it can be played solo. Doesn't mean it's designed that way. 4e might be more explicit about this fact than some other editions (though I'm not even sure about that) but it's there in each of them. It *is* each of them.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yep, D&D has - in every edition - modelled fantasy-fiction-in-action (i.e., 'writing a genre story as you go') *extremely* poorly.

It is definitely a 'team' game, or at the very least, a *group* game. Sure, it can be played solo. Doesn't mean it's designed that way. 4e might be more explicit about this fact than some other editions (though I'm not even sure about that) but it's there in each of them. It *is* each of them.

Think about it - the only class with the ability to detect trapts mechanically was the Rogue. No matter whether you interpreted as this as him being the only one to find a trap or the Rogue getting an extra "free" chance to automatically detect a trap (without trying to solve this problem "in character" by prodding an area with 10 ft poles and what-you-have), this was a very vital feature, and made him a vital part of any dungeon exploration team.

The Cleric or Priest is the only one that can heal others! How is this not important for teamwork? You want a Cleric with you to heal up you and your friends!

I found it also interesting when someone quoted a part of one of the DMGs or so from Gygyx on "role-playing XP". I am not convinced that everyone would be on the same page with the definition of role-playing here, but it seemed to boil down to this: The Clerics role is to heal others. If he doesn't do this, he is role-playing badly and should get an XP penalty. Similar, a Fighter that is played cowardly and not holding his own in battle to protect his comrades is played poorly and needs an XP reduction!
I am not really saying that Gygax has the ultimate wisdom on what a good RPG is or that we should trust everything he says, but I think this definitely points out that this kind of teamplay and role characterization for characters was part of how he envisioned D&D to be played. Saying that it never was about teamplay seems to be close to saying that D&D never assumed you would roll a d20 to resolve certain actions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Call me a cynic, but I've always seen 4e's main reason to exist "there are too many people (who are not us) selling our game", so they had to change the core in order to be incompatible with previous non-wotc content, while at the same time changing the conditions to publish for it. 4e is to prevent more Paizo or Mutants & Masterminds cases.

I think the comparison that is most apt is "barnacles on a whale."

Sure, the barnacles get a leg up, but the whale doesn't really care. The whale is the size of six busses, what the hell does it care if some thumb-sized things use it to help themselves?

In other words, I would be quite surprised to find that 3rd party sales where anywhere NEAR threatening for WotC. They just don't have the size, the weight, the power, even collectively, to do that. D&D is such a behemoth that you just can't match it. You can do minor successes in your own way, but you can't really threaten D&D.

Not to mention that the GSL doesn't prevent this sort of thing from happening -- fair use says I can make a game with the exact same mechanics as 4e and just different trade dress and fluff and terms and sell it for a profit.

I don't think that 3rd party publishers were any reason for 4e to exist. I think WotC took the opportunity of 4e to refine some things they didn't like about the d20 STL, but to say it was the prime motive for 4e would seem to me to be vastly overstating the case.

But let's not forget the RPG market is that, a market. If you rant about how I screwed your childhood fantasies with my game, but buy every supplement I publish nevertheless, your vote counts as much as zero. Same way, if you love edition X and don't plan to buy any book for it, you are not "supporting" that edition, no matter how vehemently you claim to do on some internet message board.

I think WotC's message, all throughout the last two editions, has been remarkably open: "Speak, and we'll listen." They know D&D lives and dies on its community, and they have a vested interest in giving the community what it wants.

4e's changes were mostly, we were told, to address problems with 3e. Since not everyone seemed to have the problems with 3e that 4e supposedly fixed, there is some motivation to keep the problems with 4e front and center so that when 5e rolls around, they won't be ignored.

Not buying stuff might make 5e come sooner, but it's not going to make 4e go away. There are legitimate big fans of 4e, there are people who play 4e, there are people who will buy 4e books. 4e is here to stay for a while.

"I hate 4e. It's the worst game ever. Every supplement (which I bought) is worse than the previous, and I'll buy every further supplements they publish just to see how awfully written designed and conceived they are. With 3e I just bought the core books and never needed anything else, and it was way better than 4e" means to WotC: "you're doing it right"

Well, to any company with savvy market insight, what it really means is "I am loyal to the D&D brand." That's a hugely good thing for WotC, but it does have a breaking point. WotC has listened to the masses before, apparently ("halflings are too small"?), and they will probably continue to do so. Sales could always be better.