What is wrong with 4E?

[Darth Shoju]

Hello Wisdom Penalty,



This is getting way off topic now (my apologies), but is 4E really an unmitigated commercial success?

According to this poll http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=229795 at the time of this reply approximately 40% are switching to 4E, approximately 15% are undecided, and approximately 45% are not switching to 4E.

I know nothing about corporate marketing or finance, but I can't believe that any company would write off 50% of an existing repeat-returning-customer base and call it "success".

I'd also be careful about using ENworld as an accurate market sample. We're an eccentric bunch around here IMO.

 

[Zinegata]

The books have already (in the few days since released) oversold the initial runs of both 3.5e and 3e.

Things might change in the future, but the current projections are looking good.

Wrong. They're merely reprinting the books. For reference also, the initial print run was 50% higher than the initial run of 3.5 (and 3.5 only, not 3.5 and 3.0).

And note that reprinting the books is not always an indication of high sales. It could mean that there were a lot more orders of the books, but it's not always translated to sales.

Personal suspicion: Wizards ordered a reprint after seeing the Amazon.com order volume. However, this could be extremely misleading given the huge discount Amazon is giving, which is already causing FLGSs to cry foul (this is being reported in ICV2 BTW). It may be truer to say that Amazon is raking in most of the sales, rather than the sales are really high and a reprint is in order.

Overall, there is cause for cautious optimism. But if the initial sales are not sustained 4.0 could still end up in worse shape than 3.5.

 

[HyrumOWC]

The books have already (in the few days since released) oversold the initial runs of both 3.5e and 3e.

Things might change in the future, but the current projections are looking good.

Um, no.

The books sold more than the 3.5 initial run, which was much, much less than the 3.0 run.

From ICv2:

Sell-in of 4th Edition has “far exceeded expectations” and even though the initial print run for 4th Edition was 50% higher than the order for the previous D&D 3.5 Edition...

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12654.html

Hyrum.

 

[pemerton]

...huh? 4e is precluded from adventures with shallow plots? Or just shallow fights against crystalline monsters.

4e is precluded from a certain sort of shallowness, just because the mechanics of 4e monsters mean a certain sort of thematic content is unavoidably present in the game. For example, whether or not anyone at the table asserts that Kobolds are small, shifty critters the mechanics reveal to all the players that Kobolds are like that.

This doesn't protect against shallow plots - at least in my experience nearly all RPGs have shallow plots, because the spontaneous nature of plot generation in RPGing (or, in the case of pre-packaged adventures, the need for pretty generic plots to suit a wide target audience) precludes too much sophistication.

But my complaint about Bastion of Broken Souls is that, despite a promising thematic premise, it is utterly shallow in its resolution of that premise. 4e monster and power design, by instantiating thematic content, automatically precludes the thematic shallowness of Bastion of Broken Souls.

A corrollary of this is that good 4e adventures can't be built until the right monsters are available, where "right" means "having powers that capture the appropriate thematic content". But my first quick skim through the MM shows that there is a pretty wide range of content there already (relative to the sorts of themes that one might want to explore using a high fantasy RPG as the vehicle).

 

[hong]

Ah, but there's a difference in the class abilities you give up. In previous editions, you got all of the abilities of the character class at the level you had achieved in that character class. You may give up the stuff that would only become available at the pinnacle of the class, available only to the character who effectively specialized in it by being single-classed.

No. You give up all the stuff that would be available at whatever character level you're currently at, and possibly several levels below that as well.

 

[hong]

Wrong. They're merely reprinting the books. For reference also, the initial print run was 50% higher than the initial run of 3.5 (and 3.5 only, not 3.5 and 3.0).

4E > 3.5 > 3E

 

[small pumpkin man]

Ah, but there's a difference in the class abilities you give up. In previous editions, you got all of the abilities of the character class at the level you had achieved in that character class. You may give up the stuff that would only become available at the pinnacle of the class, available only to the character who effectively specialized in it by being single-classed.

In 4e, you get a subset of the 1st level powers and a small slice amounting to a few powers as you advance. For some people, that difference is significant.

Personally, I'm not thrilled by it.

Obviously it's a different system, and you get different things, but the post I was replying to was complaining about not getting "the full realm of options" and it's fairly obvious to me that you don't get the "full range of options" in 3.x unless you're playing gestalt.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

4e is precluded from a certain sort of shallowness, just because the mechanics of 4e monsters mean a certain sort of thematic content is unavoidably present in the game. For example, whether or not anyone at the table asserts that Kobolds are small, shifty critters the mechanics reveal to all the players that Kobolds are like that.

Just so I understand:

If an NPC were to tell your PC, in game, that "kobolds are shifty li'l bastards," your PC would take that to mean that kobolds can Shift as a minor action (or whatever)?

4E shows that kobolds are "shifty" by allowing them to Shift, and this is evidence of "thematic content" that "precludes shallowness"?

 

[Spatula]

4e is precluded from a certain sort of shallowness, just because the mechanics of 4e monsters mean a certain sort of thematic content is unavoidably present in the game. For example, whether or not anyone at the table asserts that Kobolds are small, shifty critters the mechanics reveal to all the players that Kobolds are like that.

This doesn't protect against shallow plots - at least in my experience nearly all RPGs have shallow plots, because the spontaneous nature of plot generation in RPGing (or, in the case of pre-packaged adventures, the need for pretty generic plots to suit a wide target audience) precludes too much sophistication.

But my complaint about Bastion of Broken Souls is that, despite a promising thematic premise, it is utterly shallow in its resolution of that premise. 4e monster and power design, by instantiating thematic content, automatically precludes the thematic shallowness of Bastion of Broken Souls.

A corrollary of this is that good 4e adventures can't be built until the right monsters are available, where "right" means "having powers that capture the appropriate thematic content". But my first quick skim through the MM shows that there is a pretty wide range of content there already (relative to the sorts of themes that one might want to explore using a high fantasy RPG as the vehicle).

You seem to be talking more about good design than anything specific to any edition. There have been well-designed monsters, and poorly-designed ones, in every edition of the game. 4e may encourage creature designers to think more about appropriate abilities for their creations, but it does not make poor monsters impossible to create.

 

[billd91]

Obviously it's a different system, and you get different things, but the post I was replying to was complaining about not getting "the full realm of options" and it's fairly obvious to me that you don't get the "full range of options" in 3.x unless you're playing gestalt.

If you focus on the stuff you lose by never reaching the higher levels of the class, then you're not really differentiating between multi-classing and single-classing that never happens (or plans) to reach those high levels. So I think your argument falls a bit flat.