D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[Manbearcat]

<snip> but honestly, the real secret is PLOT and ACTION. Its fine if the guy that goes first doesn't have a CHA skill, he should be able to do something else, that's all.

This cuts to the core of 4e. But I'd scale PLOT back to just CONFLICT. That is what 4e's engine does; CONFLICT and ACTION (/adventure). One of the great tragedies of 4e's demise is how trivially easy it is to just improv a session out of whole cloth.

A few weeks ago, plans fell through on an evening so I introduced a few new people (along with a long time player) to TTRPG with a complete off the cuff session of 4e.

1) Players made 1st level characters (sans CB) with PHB1/2 using standard array.

2) We settled on play being centered around pretty straight-forward tropes; (a) a village with a horrible secret and (b) a haunted forest. We drew a quick map with the village, the forest, and then took turns putting an area of danger/discovery on the map.

3) The players picked 3 Themes/Backgrounds from NCS (generic-izing them a bit). Together, they came up with a quest for each T/B and wrote each on a separate flash card. I shuffled them and handed them out to the players.

This setup took about 40 minutes (with silliness and friendly jabs included). That left about 2 hours and change of gameplay. The village was was basically riffed off of 1770s pre-revolution Boston only the occupied peoples were quietly worshipers of this voracious thing in their well. The forest turned out to be haunted by malevolent elven spirits who died a century ago at the hands of an opposition clan who wanted to live peacefully with the first colonialists.

We had massive village-threatening fire that had to be put out (which turned out to be arson), a chase, an exorcism, the attempted talking down of a group of rioters against a terrified group of soldiers (lol Boston Massacre?), a witch hunt - all SCs - and a pair of combats.

CONFLICT and ACTION (/adventure). Off the cuff just using the PC build tools, monster math/tight encounter budgets, level 1 damage expressions/DCs, RC SC framework. Done. 4e is excellent at taking you through D&D's story (from levels 1-30). However, its streamlined nature and core design of closed-action-scene > transition scene > rinse/repeat (and everything integrated into that paradigm) with pushing play toward and then resolving the conflicts that the players have signaled they care about (through PC build choice and quests) makes fun free-form one-offs like the above an utter cinch.

It didn't, and still doesn't, get nearly the credit it deserves for this.

 

[thanson02]

Yeah, I can't speak to LFR. I know from talking to a few of the people that were big contributors that there ARE good LFR modules, but you're probably right, they weren't there in year 1. Honestly I don't USUALLY run modules, I LIKE to build adventures, so PERSONALLY I didn't really care how good or bad the WotC fare was. Its just that it clearly undermined the game.


SCs ARE the lifeblood of 4e, if they're understood well and done properly. The presentation, and the DMG1 pre-errata SC rules just mostly sucked in certain mechanical aspects. If they'd have presented the RC version and built a few good SCs then it would have been OK. Yes, its easiest if you know the party in advance, but honestly, the real secret is PLOT and ACTION. Its fine if the guy that goes first doesn't have a CHA skill, he should be able to do something else, that's all.



There are lots and lots of little ways that 4e could have called back more to earlier editions without costing it anything really unique. Instead the designer made it almost a mandate to break with D&D in several ways.

I am running LFR adventures with my home crew and they are great one shots to help the players get a feel for FR. Although I will admit that one if the main reasons it is working is because I am digging into other sources for story fluff to get the feel of the environment.

As for SC, I completely agree! I have several homebrewed that I use on a regular basis and they are a great tool to help track social and exploration situations. They were presented badly in the published material, no lie. In fact, I think the best one they had was out if the Monster Vault, which was one of the later ones. But my players love them and they help keep things organized for me. Win-Win.

Towards your last point, yea. But to be honest, I was burned out by 3.5 (and creeped out by some if the players I would run into playing it in my area) so the change in direction was refreshing for me. It made it a game again and because of that, it became fun again. And with the release of supplants and the Unearthed Arcana articles (a MUST have to play 4E, IMHO), any issues I had in the beginning faded.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

I couldn't disagree with this approach more! I view 4E's ability to separate mechanics from fluff utterly and completely to be one of the system's greatest strengths.

A bit late to this conversation, but nevertheless: I am SO fond of 4E's possibility of refluffing powers. Two weeks ago one of my players told me, he would like to play some kind of alchemist who throws potions and glitter at his friends and foes. He played a standard cleric for several sessions and was okay with it but realized that he didn't like the whole concept of worshipping a god etc. So he asked me if he could become an potion master of sorts.

So I renamed all of his cleric powers, gave them back and said "now you are an alchemist". He couldn't be happier. No rules changes, no feats, no multiclassing, just renaming. He even was happy about the fact that he didn't have to learn new powers and their mechanics. Now he slices his enemies apart for ingredients, brews oils and potions and his "Cascade of Light" is now called "Essence of Molten Gold".

 

[Neonchameleon]

3.x doesn't seem to have really HAD a theory, beyond 'give them loads of options and a lot of rules, they'll figure it out'. 4e just has poor presentation of its concepts. Some of the devs were designing an indie game, and some were designing tactical combat system with D&D on the name, and they didn't talk.

3e was about mechanical streamlining and systematisation. Its theory was "D&D is a good game that we love but has some very clunky bits, and has too many inconsistencies to make the player making plans easy. We'll iron out the inconsistencies and leave a streamlined system you can do whatever you want with." (And yes, the system is streamlined in that everything works the same way. And is fair in that everything works the same way for everyone.)

 

[thanson02]

3e was about mechanical streamlining and systematisation. Its theory was "D&D is a good game that we love but has some very clunky bits, and has too many inconsistencies to make the player making plans easy. We'll iron out the inconsistencies and leave a streamlined system you can do whatever you want with." (And yes, the system is streamlined in that everything works the same way. And is fair in that everything works the same way for everyone.)

Maybe on the player end, but not the DM end. The tools were not there to truly challenge the players, at least from what I saw. All the 3/3.5 DMs was more of back seat narrator. Perhaps your experiences were different, but that is what I kept running into and based on what I have heard from others, I am not alone in this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

3e was about mechanical streamlining and systematisation. Its theory was "D&D is a good game that we love but has some very clunky bits, and has too many inconsistencies to make the player making plans easy. We'll iron out the inconsistencies and leave a streamlined system you can do whatever you want with." (And yes, the system is streamlined in that everything works the same way. And is fair in that everything works the same way for everyone.)

I was looking at it from a thematic perspective. WotC put out this sill byline, "back to the dungeon!" but there's not that much procedural Gygaxian play in 3e, and 3.5 just went off into this weird sort of rocket tag game where everything past 5th level is insta-gank, and its all about tricking up so you do the ganking and not being the gankee. That would actually be a pretty reasonable game, except they A) forgot to tell anyone that's what it was, and B) larded the game full of classes that have no business being in that environment. Its really kind of a hot mess.

Yes, its 'streamlined' and its systems are (mostly) pretty unified, but its not really 'clean' in the way that 4e is clean. 4e is INTENTIONAL design, even though it seems like it got away from its designers a bit, they definitely thought through each element and sorted out how it would play.

 

[Nibelung]

SCs ARE the lifeblood of 4e, if they're understood well and done properly. The presentation, and the DMG1 pre-errata SC rules just mostly sucked in certain mechanical aspects. If they'd have presented the RC version and built a few good SCs then it would have been OK. Yes, its easiest if you know the party in advance, but honestly, the real secret is PLOT and ACTION. Its fine if the guy that goes first doesn't have a CHA skill, he should be able to do something else, that's all.

I got burned so hard by the earlier presentation of SC that I simply can't use them anymore in my games. I know the rules changed and got better, but my mindset got engraved with that first version, and block my creativity.

So now when I need a group check, I take advantage of having exactly five players, and just ask everyone how they will bypass that stuff, and if three succeed, the whole group succeeds. And then I move on with the plot or the action.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I got burned so hard by the earlier presentation of SC that I simply can't use them anymore in my games. I know the rules changed and got better, but my mindset got engraved with that first version, and block my creativity.

So now when I need a group check, I take advantage of having exactly five players, and just ask everyone how they will bypass that stuff, and if three succeed, the whole group succeeds. And then I move on with the plot or the action.

That's highly unfortunate. I've had the good fortune to have not one, but three DMs who really understood how to work within the Skill Challenge structure, and I believe it's distinctly enriched my experiences of 4e play. In fact, in my current 4e game, we've gone two sessions without any (real*) combat--and yet the session-before-last was as action-packed as any of the others have been.

*Technically it wasn't a combat, but during the middle phase of the session before last, we had a sort of impromptu Skill Challenge to escape an underwater wreck with psionic zombies between us and the exit. My character (Dragonborn Paladin, naturally) used his cold breath to pulverize those between us and the airlock; I got a solid attack roll (something like 23?) so that sufficed for that round. Later, our Wizard used one of his encounter spells to keep the zombies away from the airlock chamber itself until we could bring the runner to the ship's hull so we could all escape. We also had some skill rolls (athletics, acrobatics, arcana, and the campaign-specific skill, technology) in the mix. And, perhaps ironically, our DM is working just off having read the DMG1 and sporadically read DMG2--though he's had people advise him on the flaws of the Skill Challenge presentation in the former.

 

[Pobman]

I'd love to see a video of a group playing through a "Skill Challenge done right". Does anybody know if such a video exists?

 

[Balesir]

I'd love to see a video of a group playing through a "Skill Challenge done right". Does anybody know if such a video exists?

I would be surprised if it does, because capturing one would be like trying to bottle laughter. Running a really good SC is hard, even if supremely satisfying when it comes off. Very much like running really memorable combats, I think. I can usually manage "pretty fun and moderately satisfying", but "memorable and amazing" strikes randomly and more seldom.

FWIW I find increasingly that DungeonWorld's advice about player moves can be extrapolated to SCs. Use them only when you can identify a specific intent that the players/characters have, and use it to judge progress toward that intent. Each failure brings some cost, hard choice or dilution of that intent - complete failure means that the intent is not realised, but you should keep the outcome interesting and moving in an interesting direction ("Fail Forward").

Also FWIW I posted some systemic notes that I use with moderate success here in the "Open Skill Challenges" thread. These were an attempt to underpin a more reactive, game-like approach to skill challenges with player planning and mechanical systems.