D&D 4E Where was 4e headed before it was canned?

[Mycroft]

I think the difference being how long it takes an edition to get there. Look at 5e - IIRC, 4e had more books by year 2 than 5e has in 5. Quickly looking at the list on Wikipedia- I see 41 Player and DM books. Plus nine setting books. O.O In 4 years. So, yeah, we're looking at a hardcover pretty close to every month. That was insane. No one could ever keep up with that pace.

Even though arguably 4e is the shortest edition, in it's time, it managed to bang out almost as much material (not counting adventures) as 3e. Good grief. I had kinda forgotten how ludicrous it was back then.

You're right. Even though its shelf life was not so long, its product line, was. I think Heroes of the Feywild (the Witch is very cool) was their best latter day piece.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be clear: the Basic Set, back in the fad years, moved units like no other single book (the Red Box, at the height, something like 1.2 million IIRC). That doesn't imply that BECMI or the nominally nearly indistinguishable but mechanically distinct B/X that preceded it were more popular or driving the fad relative to AD&D (or even 0D&D). Players migrated from Basic straight to AD&D all the time, some, I'm sure, went from Basic to 0D&D or even Arduin.

I think there are several things people don't understand about those days. Gary was a brilliant promoter. In the 70's D&D was nothing, during the first 6 years it became a big thing in the GAME world, but it shifted probably less than 100k units in that entire time, including several modules, 3 different sets of core rules, etc.

Starting with the Red Box, spurred by the popularity of the cartoon and the fortuitousness of the 'Moms against D&D' non-sense (which made playing an act of rebellion, always a golden key to teenage uptake of anything) the Red Box shifted a lot of units. AD&D was there to cash in on the flow of more interested gamers who wanted a game with more 'stuff' than B/X provided. Likewise B/X and BECMI provided an easy gift-friendly entry and a bit more straightforward dungeon crawling kind of game experience that suited a lot of 'beer and pretzels' type play.

Whether Gygax and Co really planned things that way, they got a happy synergy between versions of the game, some luck in terms of the wider social scene, and they really did pump out a LOT of product. There weren't core books at the rate of 4e, by any means, but they pumped out tons of modules, spin-off products, BECMI stuff, settings, etc.

The other thing to remember is that this period really only lasted about 6 years. Between 1981 and about 1987 D&D flourished. After that it remained fairly popular and successful for a few more years, but TSR felt the need to put out 2e in '89, and that never reached anything like the sales of earlier days. The 90's was just a long slow slide into irrelevance with lots of product and an ever-decreasing market share. Maybe this was a result of Gary being booted, who knows? Perhaps he'd have found a way to keep the game seeming 'cool' and something for lots of kids to try instead of basically almost a legacy game with only a fairly slow turnover in an audience which seems to get older and grayer every year.

4e was meant to change that, the marketing and product 'packaging' didn't quite produce the increase in audience that was desired (maybe in company with 2008 being basically a very lousy year overall, I dunno). Clearly WotC learned some things the 2nd time around, but it is worth pointing out that 4e still managed to sell really well, it outsold 3.x!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, absolutely, that's right: my point is, how many people just stuck with Basic.

IME, and that dates back to when OD&D was the only RPG in existence, Basic filled a kind of gap for most people. I bought Holme's Basic because you literally could not get your hands on the LBBs! It gave us SOMETHING to actually work with, some rules. We then just photocopied bits out of the other books, and eventually got copies of them.

When AD&D came out, first the MM was just a D&D supplement, the 'AD&D' logo on the cover didn't mean a thing to us. This was just a collection of existing and new monsters with updated stats, treasure lists, etc. ready to use with existing stuff.

Even when the PHB came out we simply added it to our game, sort of like when 3.5 came out people converted some, but not all, characters from 3.0 rules. By then we understood that AD&D was a kind of a new version of the game, but it wasn't until Red Box appeared that anyone even thought of 'Basic' as a separate game and not just a starter set for the real game. It still WAS a starter set for a lot of people.

Once the DMG was out, I really never saw play using Basic|B/X|BECMI again. I know there were people who used those rules, but in ordinary "out in the world play" IME it was pretty close to 100% AD&D with a few things cribbed out of a BECMI book, or using one of the Basic modules (we generally just ignored the slight differences in numbers between the two games).

Gauging from my experience, the big sales of Basic, assuming they are real numbers, was gift boxes. Red Box sold like hotcakes as a very common gift for kids, just like many other toy fads and collectibles and whatnot have done over the years. Some percentage of those kids became avid RPG players and (again IME) the vast majority of those ended up playing in games which used the AD&D rules in some form. TBH, until the introduction of Expert in 1981, you really didn't have a choice, as Basic only got you to level 3. So from 1978 (PHB) to 1981 (Expert) there was no other choice beyond level 3 anyway.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think it'd be unfair to say that Essentials was early 5e development. Kinda like how people point to Bo9S or Star Wars SAGA as early experiments in 4e, or how I expect they'll point to Starfinder as presaging PF2.

You can also see the pace of release rapidly decelerate through the post-E run, indicative of losing resources and/or shifting development resources to pre-5e/Next.

I think it might be more correct to think that there were 2 semi-independent things going on here:

One was a 'release less stuff' agenda. Given that 4e had already covered all the really needed material, and a lot besides, it isn't clear that this was linked to any decision not to go forward with 4e. It was just the inevitable consequence of having flooded the market with close to 30 books in under 4 years.

The other was a feeling that there was a need to address people who weren't as interested in 4e by releasing a different type of material. This lead to Essentials, obviously.

So, once the Essentials SKUs were released (and WotC promised exactly 10 evergreen SKUs in this product) they were left to go down the 'release less stuff, and have it be different in tone from core 4e' as the sum of these two things.

AFTER THAT 5e was conceived. I don't know what combination of corporate fiat and feelings of dislike and dissatisfaction with 4e on the part of MM and Co. really lead to that particular decision.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They didnt, they sat down and played to the best of their D&D ability. It's a hard enough job to get a group of casual players to focus on what the DM is saying, much less to invest in the game system itself. Maybe that's why 5e works better for the same group? I'm not sure but it just does.

This dovetails with one of my observations about 5e. It requires many less decision points to arrive at a given class concept, at least for the most common 'trope' D&D character concepts. The actual character is not less complex, but there is more leeway in making one that has less options in play. There are a LOT less choices to make ongoing as well, once you pick your class, and then maybe again at 2nd level, you make all the basic choices. You CAN pick feats later on, but even those are totally optional. Someone who could care less about rules and just 'want to play my axe dwarf like always' is going to be a lot happier with 5e than 4e. Essentials might have partly scratched that itch too, but only later in the 4e's cycle and not as well.

 

[Garthanos]

This dovetails with one of my observations about 5e. It requires many less decision points to arrive at a given class concept

if your concept is a near match for their premade subclass otherwise it's homebrew everybody is doing it too. And that says to me character design is not the paradise of ease people claim. And to me it seems their are less interesting on going choices unless you are a spell caster... so there is that

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One of my favorite books, and I still use it for ideas in 5e, is the Open Graves (i believe that's what its called). Anytime I have an undead themed adventure I crack it open for the location samples.

Open Grave could spawn a dozen campaigns by itself
Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons, another dozen
Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons, ditto
Plane Above, Ditto
Plane Below, ...
Demonomicon, heh, 20 easily! (well, er, 666?).

HotFW and HotEC, Underdark, HoS, these are all gold mines, and very high quality stuff in terms of ideas IMHO. Then you have stuff like Gloomwrought, which is a very heavily elaborated 'mini campaign' setting, almost a module really.

I haven't read a lot of the other stuff, but there are a few more in the same vein. NONE of them are bad, and I disagree with the earlier post that they didn't have room for 'good ideas' with the pace of releases. To the contrary, 4e seemed to let loose a lot of the constraints that held back a lot of good ideas in the past! It was FILLED with good ideas!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

if your concept is a near match for their premade subclass otherwise it's homebrew everybody is doing it too. And that says to me character design is not the paradise of ease people claim. And to me it seems their are less interesting on going choices unless you are a spell caster... so there is that

4e is definitely more open-ended in some sense. OTOH 5e isn't exactly a straight-jacket either! Particularly if MCing is allowed then it has a very large degree of flexibility. I agree that the lack of an A/E/D/U structure is inhibiting in the sense that something like the Champion is very locked down and can't get choices beyond a narrow range. Again, you could play a fighter/wizard or an Eldritch Knight, Paladin, Ranger, etc and get different variations on that. Yes, spell casting is absolutely the choice set of options in 5e, and I am not trying to defend that.

I'm only saying that the game is VERY amenable to playing with a pretty simply 'canned' set of options and getting a sort of character of a simple archetype.

Again, think of 'Axe dwarf'. In 5e you pick dwarf, get an axe, pick a fighting style of 'great weapon' and choose either BattleMaster or Champion. That's pretty much it. You can make no other choices, period, all the way to level 20 and it 'just works'. Your ability scores, equipment, and proficiency choices are fairly obvious and/or give you a bit of personalization leeway. You COULD pick feats, but you can just ignore that (or it can even be left out as an optional rule). Background and personality traits are pretty much 'color'.

In 4e you would pick dwarf and fighter, then great weapon style, and then several feats (out of 100's of choices you should pick only a few certain ones to focus on this, but you have to read a lot of them to know which are the ones). Now you have to make several power choices, and you still have skills, background, and maybe theme to consider, which can each have some material impact later on. Your ability score choices are also fairly significant and there is some nuance there (WIS vs CON for instance).

The BIG difference though is ongoing. 5e you have no more choices required, except maybe to pick some techniques or whatever they call them. In 4e you have constantly pick feats, powers, ASIs, then a PP and an ED if you go that high, etc. You also have to figure out your build WRT magic items, which is pretty important. STAYING an effective axe dwarf is not 100% straightforward. It takes actual real engagement with the rules and paying attention, you CANNOT simply let it ride! If you do, then you'll end up with an inferior combat ability and won't fill your desired archetype well in play!

 

[Garthanos]

4e is definitely more open-ended in some sense. OTOH 5e isn't exactly a straight-jacket either! Particularly if MCing is allowed then it has a very large degree of flexibility. I agree that the lack of an A/E/D/U structure is inhibiting in the sense that something like the Champion is very locked down and can't get choices beyond a narrow range. Again, you could play a fighter/wizard or an Eldritch Knight, Paladin, Ranger, etc and get different variations on that. Yes, spell casting is absolutely the choice set of options in 5e, and I am not trying to defend that.

I'm only saying that the game is VERY amenable to playing with a pretty simply 'canned' set of options and getting a sort of character of a simple archetype.

Again, think of 'Axe dwarf'. In 5e you pick dwarf, get an axe, pick a fighting style of 'great weapon' and choose either BattleMaster or Champion. That's pretty much it. You can make no other choices, period, all the way to level 20 and it 'just works'. Your ability scores, equipment, and proficiency choices are fairly obvious and/or give you a bit of personalization leeway. You COULD pick feats, but you can just ignore that (or it can even be left out as an optional rule). Background and personality traits are pretty much 'color'.

In 4e you would pick dwarf and fighter, then great weapon style, and then several feats (out of 100's of choices you should pick only a few certain ones to focus on this, but you have to read a lot of them to know which are the ones). Now you have to make several power choices, and you still have skills, background, and maybe theme to consider, which can each have some material impact later on. Your ability score choices are also fairly significant and there is some nuance there (WIS vs CON for instance).

The BIG difference though is ongoing. 5e you have no more choices required, except maybe to pick some techniques or whatever they call them. In 4e you have constantly pick feats, powers, ASIs, then a PP and an ED if you go that high, etc. You also have to figure out your build WRT magic items, which is pretty important. STAYING an effective axe dwarf is not 100% straightforward. It takes actual real engagement with the rules and paying attention, you CANNOT simply let it ride! If you do, then you'll end up with an inferior combat ability and won't fill your desired archetype well in play!

Multiclassing to make a 4e style swordmage required level 17 to get the abilities that I had at beginning heroicwith no sign of paragon capabilities let alone epic or the teleporting which is arguably a core feature. I found role specific abilities the most problematic though surprise surprise in the edition that pretends roles do not exist. Really looks straight jacket to me. Multiclassing fails its promise ... organic looks better to me in theory than practice.

Oh and shame on you for pretending optimizing is necessary

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Multiclassing to make a 4e style swordmage required level 17 to get the abilities that I had at beginning heroicwith no sign of paragon capabilities let alone epic or the teleporting which is arguably a core feature. I found role specific abilities the most problematic though surprise surprise in the edition that pretends roles do not exist. Really looks straight jacket to me. Multiclassing fails its promise ... organic looks better to me in theory than practice.

Oh and shame on you for pretending optimizing is necessary

I'm not 'pretending'. You don't have to 'optimize' to the level of putting together weird and obtuse combinations of elements (there are possibilities there for certain builds, but not required), unlike 3.x. However, your character will start to really underperform the expected baseline 4e character combat performance by high heroic tier. This might not matter in some games (where everyone plays basically the same way or you just don't care) but modules and general encounter guidelines DO assume your PC puts out a DPR that reaches some general median performance, or at least close. Even my "I don't want to understand the rules" players in our 4e campaigns began to realize at a certain point that they were leaving a LOT on the table, and they got one of the other players (in one campaign) that had DDI and some good grasp of the mechanics to help them out with retraining and whatever. This was by around 6th level.

Honestly, I am no expert on ANY of 5e in terms of finer details, like how MCing stacks up exactly. I know it is there. I know you can play an Eldritch Knight, which seemed fairly effective and 'spell casty with a sword'. Heck, my dwarf Transmuter was actually pretty competent in melee! He wouldn't really ever DO that because cantrips, but he had chain armor and a pretty decent hit point total. He sure wasn't afraid to go to the front line and blast stuff face-to-face. As to exactly reproducing 4e swordmage (IE magic delivered in melee with a sword and acting as a type of defender with a high inherent AC and some funky special ability) I couldn't say. My guess is that there are plenty of people with a looser idea of what 'swordmage' means who would be happy, but not all.

5e does cover a lot of thematic territory. Not with the granularity that 4e does, at least not without added material, but it has the virtue that MOST PLAYERS will be able to work its 'levers' easily and get something acceptable to them. My guess is 95% of all D&D players are not after an exact character concept to the T. They are after something fun to play, and if they can find it within the given options and within their comfort level of rules mastery, they are happy. 5e has a much higher probability of success in that area, and this most likely accounts for the vast bulk of its increased popularity vis-a-vis 4e, IMHO.