What is the essence of D&D

[Tony Vargas]

there is a subset of people that, inter alia, really liked the way that 4e handled martial powers. Which is great! But that doesn't mean that everyone who didn't like it, didn't like it for the reason that these people like it.

5e design failed, at points, to catch onto the reverse of that. Just look at the 'tactical combat' module. "There you go 4e fans: square counting and complexity, we even gave you back facing! y'all love facing, right?" Or the Battlemaster "you wanted a complex fighter right?" & PDK "shouty healing! What more do you want?"

I have seen many, many people comment that 4e didn't really make sense or come into its own until Essentials in terms of appealing to a mass market and being understandable to the casual player; however, others (such as @Tony Vargas ) repeatedly complain that Essentials is a betrayal of 4e.

Overstating it a bit, there. Though there were folks that felt that way - 'betrayal' being a by-word of the edition war for how some 3.x fans felt about the premature end of that ed's run - or at least knowingly recycled the word.
Essentials was a clear reversal of direction from the original 4e, and was very much pointed at long-time & returning players (Red Box campaign, massive update to bring thing back into line with the classic game). New players were even /more/ confused by the 10 essentials products, only a couple of which they even theoretically needed to play, and none labeled anything as intuitive as 'Player's Handbook,' then they had been by the shelf-collidascope of everything-is-core.

I know I have a 4venger rep, but the fact is, I've defended every ed of D&D from 1e through 5e - when they were unfairly attacked. 4e was just attacked a lot more.

So moving into the instant question, it's a pure category error to ascribe one's pet cause (I LOVE MARTIALS!) to the failure of a particular edition of D&D (to the extent it was a failure).

Not about the commercial failure, which, as you point out, had a veritable 'perfect storm' of contributing factors. The loss of the Primacy of Magic in 4e, and it's restoration in 5e (and 'too little/too late' movement in that direction in Essentials) corresponds with that failure, just as it does the edition war, but blaming one of those for either or both of the others is ignoring a lot of other factors. It's the correlation of the loss of Primacy with the sense of the ed "not really being D&D," something noted even by those who liked and adopted it, as well as hammered pretty hard by those who hated/feared/rejected and 'warred' against it.

First, as I described in the OP, I view D&D as a conversation between players over time, and 4e has contributed to that conversation, and is part of the DNA of the new edition.

It might have contributed to a conversation, if the Edition War shouting match hadn't been so loud.

I do find your idea of continuity an emotionally appealing one, and, had 5e come through with certain of it's goals more successfully, there might be more of a reason to indulge it. But, the Edition War stands as a dreadful discontinuity, and, though 'healed' in the sense that no one is so offended (or 'betrayed') by 5e as to war against it like they did 4e, it is not erased from history.

on something that Tony has said several times; the idea that if someone had kept up with the hobby, had kept up with 3e, had read Book of 9 Swords and Tome of Magic and incorporated them into their play ... maybe paid attention to more modern TTRPG theory ... maybe they didn't think it was a big change!

I believe that was Hussar.

But not everyone is like that. A lot of gamers are lapsed gamers, or occasional gamers, and to the extent that you want a renaissance in playing, you need to attract those people too- the ones that need something which is mostly familiar.

That, OTOH, sounds like me.

It's not about the primacy of magic; 4e is plenty magical however you want to define it.

You may have seen Maxperson repeating the edition war zinger about "non-traditional magic!" (And going so far as to repeat it /in context/ - something 4vengers usually had to type out. That really was pretty cool of you, Max.) It actually illustrates a good point: whether you remove the gap in power & importance between Magic & mundane by reducing magic in power and balancing it with non-magical alternatives - or, by literally removing or willfully-misinterpreting-as-magic those alternatives, the result is the same. Magic ceases to be special and of prime importance in play. While 4e balanced magic with martial in the realm of classes, it is that ubiquitous fungibility that it inflicted on magic items that eroded the Primacy of Magic on that end.

5e, of course, restored both the superiority of casters /and/ the rare/wonderous impact of magic items.

4e was a bold attempt at a different direction that didn't work, but parts of 4e remain relevant to both how people DM and have been incorporated into 5e's rules, making 4e one of the most interesting parts of the grand tapestry that is D&D.

There's a difference between 'didn't work' and 'didn't succeed commercially.' The 4e approach was mechanically sound - more so than any other edition, really - and succeeded admirably to a number of objective measure as a game. In doing so, it lost that sense of really being D&D, though.

My supposition is that the loss of the Primacy of Magic was the key thing that it lost - making said Primacy a very viable candidate for the Essence of D&D.


I guess, for this last post, that it's not really that supposition which has so disrupted the intent of your thread, as the foundation it rests on: that the Edition War, both in it's rhetoric, but mainly just in it's existence, represents a gap in the continuity of D&D's history & conversation. It's an ugly thing, I agree, but it's an ugly truth.

 

[Nagol]

That's not really true. Power Words, for example, had a casting time of 1. And even Fireball or Lightning Bolt are still a casting time of 3, which is 2 better than a longsword. I've always wondered about these groups that constantly have spells interrupted. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it's something I never saw.

Considering Large monsters had +6 to their initiative, and anything bigger than that went all the way up to +12, I've always been rather surprised at how often people claim that spells got interrupted.

One of my favorite memories from a campaign in the early '80s was the group (between 5th - 7th levels) did something that triggered a roll on the astral/ethereal wandering encounter chart and got a high-level M-U result. When it became obvious the situation was going to end badly, the group freaked out and absolutely nailed the M-U with every fast-acting attack they could pull out in an effort to keep him neutralised. The party M-U reverted to using just magic missiles for the first 3 rounds because it had the lowest segment count available. The fighter types went for their daggers.

The enemy M-U was interrupted casting 2 times before he went down. The first would have obliterated the group. The second would have had him escape.

His bodyguards on the other hand, nearly took the group on their own.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Tony Vargas]

I've skipped a few pages ... and sorry if I helped start the whole "4E was bad" tangent.

Taken the right way - Hussar has an excellent summation, above - it's not about good or bad, just different.

People, like you, who didn't like 4e, people who hated it enough to actively war against it, people who reflexively defended it, and people who genuinely liked it best of all editions - at least some from each category - could 'agree' (in various, grudging, differently-spun ways) that was /different/ from other editions. "Not D&D," in some sense.

Thus lacking the Essence of D&D the OP was looking for.

I'm not saying 4E was a bad game (although I admit I burned out on it, especially high level play), but to me it didn't feel like D&D. I don't think that has anything to do with magic vs martial, it was the basic structure that changed. I understand why they did it, they were trying to have better balance between classes.

And the imbalances between classes were very much between Tier 1 & 2 full casters and Tier 4 & 5 non-magical ones. So, yes, class balance had everything to do with magic vs martial.

Not so much to do with magic /items/ (though, they were no so longer needed as a crutch to balance martial classes)

For me and several other people who played other editions there was just something missing. These are just my personal observations, and observations of others that I played with.

1.All the classes kind of played the same. I'd argue that everyone became "supernatural" or maybe anime/cartoon like. My fighter cast spells by another name. He no longer felt like a mundane fighter.

So, on the one hand I feel compelled to point out that this is flatly false, the classes - if you actually played them - played /very/ differently, fighters were nothing like wizards were nothing like rogues were nothing like Paladins, etc... The similarity was in structure, resource parity, and balance.

But, I have to remind myself, 'feel' is /very/ subjective. So while the similarity was only in resource management, if you focused only on that similarity, and didn't care about the differences between an exploit using a weapon vs a spell using an implement, vs a controller interdicting the enemy and a striker murdering them one at a time, then, yeah, it's a 'feel.'

In either case, though, the complaint speaks /directly/ to the Primacy of Magic, as it requires magic be /better/ - more significant, more powerful, more critical or important - and it can't plausibly /be/ that if it's on the same resource schedule as, and remotely balanced with martial.

2,. It was not as genre flexible. You were kind of locked in to a certain type and style of play, there wasn't really much room to customize without a lot of work.

Two different things, here. Genre flexibility, without radicaly re-working the rules, is something D&D has always lacked - but, since so many of use were happy to radically re-work the rules, it often got credit for it, just the same. 4e, with it's embrace of readily re-skinning powers (as well as gear as 3e had), could shift genre without any change to mechanics. And, because it had abandoned the Primacy of Magic, it could easily shift to a genre that didn't include magic, at all.
/Style/ of play, OTOH, not much to do with genre. Balanced games, like 4e aspired to be, naturally work with a wider range of play styles, while imbalanced ones can tend to force (over-reward) or punish specific styles. We heard the 'doesn't support X style' (like CaW, for instance), a lot. It would be more acturate, IMHO, to say it didn't /force/ those styles.

3.They tried to codify too much. Yes, the rules were more airtight but because of that there was a lack of spontaneity and freedom that seemed to always creep in. I think in part we never felt like we could improvise actions that could be represented by powers

The whole codification thing started a lot earlier, with the Thief, and continued with attempts at skill systems. Ironically, while "improvising" in most editions was just an appeal to the DM to make an arbitrary ruling, in 4e even /that/ was codified - well, had guidelines - p42. You've made this complaint before, the fact that the game gave you license to do exactly what you said you couldn't is known to you.

But, again, it's still a fair observation on another level: if you could just 'improvise' the equivalent magic missle with an arcana check or twin strike any time you swung two weapons, you'd be undermining the uniqueness of the classes. It's just more an observation about class systems, in general.

Too many ongoing effects and conditions.

4e had far fewer ongoing effects than pre-buff-celebrating 3e (and fewer different duration formulae to track for them), and fewer named bonuses and named conditions, as well. So that could hardly have been not-D&D for that reason.

Too much overhead. Daily powers, encounter powers, at-will powers. There was always that "have I played this card yet" feel to the game.

Compared to playing a caster in the classic game, that was a bit of a simplification, really. The "have I played this card yet" feel was very much a feature of Vancian in all other editions, in balancing martial v magical, and thus loosing the Primacy of Magic, 4e just extended it - in a consistent, easier to learn, understand & manage way - to all classes.

It always put the game mechanics front and center. Encounters became "Magic D&D the Gathering" with cards powers being countered and your "deck" being your build.

Again, a valid superficial observation, but whether you wanted mechanics first or fiction first, 4e was readily adaptable to the style without changing mechanics. The power structure separated fluff & crunch, thus the 'fiction' was easily customizable by the player, you could play the character you wanted, doing the things you wanted, the way you wanted to describe them, so if you had an impulse to put the fiction front-and-center, you could, and could do so with more authority and greater freedom of choice. If, OTOH, you /were/ interested in mechanics and play for it's own sake, that was readily doable, too. It's another case of allowing different styles rather than forcing specific ones.

Obviously 5E inherited bits and pieces from 4E and all previous editions. No game is perfect, but to me it feels like an upgraded version of older editions not a different game with the cosmetic trappings of D&D.
*honestly I was never able to quite put my finger on why we felt creativity was stifled in 4E, it was just a common complaint

It's because the wonder of magic was lost: without the Primacy of Magic, magic was just another tool. Without the profound disadvantage of lacking magic, there was no impetus to improvise desperate tricks in combat to contribute, something/anything, to the combat where your few codified mundane abilities were useless.

And that's not mocking or putting words in your mouth. Playing the underdog is legit style, and it's not uncommon in fiction for an underdog to turn things around with some harebrained desperate trick on the spur of the moment. 4e was /designed/ to let you do that - with p42 improvisation, guidelines that let the DM design encounters that could be very hard, but probably not fatal to too many PC with some dependability, and re-skinning - but it didn't make it /necessary/.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But then again, so is 3e AFAIC.

To be fair to 4e, I had a similar adverse reaction to 3e. Although at least with 3e the basic structure and terminology seemed more familiar.

 

[Oofta]

Just to throw 4E a bone, I do miss a couple of PCs I played in 4E.

I liked how I could have a striker cleric that could dish out decent damage and heal at the same time. Sooo many D12s at high levels.

I also liked my avenger. Vengeance paladins are similar in feel/fluff I guess.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Nagol]

In essence ,this thread reminds me of the "big tent" threads like this one The D&D Experience (or, All Roads lead to Rome) and this one Mearls' Legends and Lore (or, "All Roads Lead to Rome, Redux") which attempted to identify those bits that make D&D feel like D&D.

Not that the discussion can't be amusing, but it seems the experience of D&D is diverse enough no consensus beyond the most superficial can be reached.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But for you to keep saying that continues to elevate your own opinions over what people tell you; you are ignoring the evidence.

I'd love to keep /opinion/ out of it.

My opinion, which doesn't matter in the least, is that 4e was absolutely D&D, that though the changes it made were extensive, they were directly evolutionary from 3e, and generally (except for the abandonment of modular multiclassing) improvements. If I were arguing my opinion, I'd say that 4e being "NOT D&D" is a bunch of hyperbole. I can see why it /feels/ that way, and acknowledge that, but it's not how /I/ feel. It's also just not that important an opinion to me. I'm fine with stipulating that 4e was Not D&D, in some essential sense, since it's clearly an overwhelming perception, and, I can even empathize on some level, since I did experience moments of disequilibrium when there was no freak'n spells/day chart for the magic-user. (OTOH, having each class's powers organized by level right after the class, was comfortingly 1e- like. So, y'know, feelings, they're subjective.)

4e stood out as different, though, whether it crossed a line for you personally, or not. And, objectively, if often only cosmetically, it was /different/. As a game, strictly mechanically, it was significantly less broken. As a nostalgic experience of old-school D&D, it did not flow naturally - I could, and did, evoke nostalgia in 4e, but it was 'bits' and it was still with a very different mechanical spin. My group explored the Temple of the Frog as an extended skill challenge and faced Stephen the Rock all in a single, long session - it'd've taken months of play in old-school dungeon-crawl mode.

But that's all feelz and opinions and retreating into subjectivity so no one has to be right or wrong or experience any sort of disequilibrium or re-examine their positions.

I can tell you, definitively, that my reaction was the same as @Elfcrusher when it came to 4e. I tried 3e (didn't like it at all!), and then I went to go check out 4e, and it was ... too much. I had no idea of the on-line debates, or the war, or anything, but it was bizarre and unappealing to me. Too much "crunch" and it was too foreign to me given my background, my desires, and my time constraints. But then again, so is 3e AFAIC.

Then an excess of crunch can hardly be pointed to as a reason 4e is "not D&D," in your case, can it? 3e was even crunchier and more 'bloated' (had more awesome options!) than 4e.

I mean, was it even "not D&D" in your estimation? Was 3e also "not D&D" for you?

And I repeatedly say that my biggest issue with 5e is that it has too much magic; this is something that other people agree with (and others, disagree with), but it's certainly a debate.

Mostly around cantrips being at-will, as I've heard it.

But it's not nearly enough to make 5e 'not D&D,' while 'Fighters Casting Spells' (magic & martial balanced on the same resource schedule) was.

In the end, D&D has always had a "fighter" and always will; many people who play will always gravitate toward martial options, and I don't think it's accurate to characterize "primacy of magic" as the salient feature of D&D; in order to do so, you have to actively discount both what people say, and their revealed preferences (the number of options for doing "gritty" campaigns).

Nothing about gritty campaigns nor the popularity of the fighter - which, spanned all editions, 4e included - undercuts the Primacy of Magic as the Essence of really-D&D edition of the game. In fact, it's absolutely necessary to have alternatives to magic, in use, in play, to highlight that Primacy. Without the Fighter, there's no one who would have died but for that healing magic. Without the 5e fighter, able to Action Surge and dispatch /4/ orcs in one round if he hits and rolls good damage all 4 times at 5th level, the power of the 5th-level wizards new Fireball to dispatch a dozen whether they save or not simply isn't as awesome.

As for discounting what people say: when there's a cacophony of different opinions about underlying facts, the underlying facts are subject to examination and analysis, the cacophony is not.

 

[lowkey13]

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