D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Fifth Element]

Read the rest of the sentence.

It's a full sentence. The other sentences don't change the fact that the first sentence is a truism.

 

[Randomthoughts]

actually no.

According to Ben and the people he talked with and the info he found, they knew it was going to be controversial. They also believed it was worth it because they were confident, or at least hopeful, that it would bring in many more new people.

This is an interesting statement. Would be very interested in seeing this elaborated in the book. Like, who are “they?” The marketing or brand team? The game designers? Both?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That would make sense, sure. Regarding 4e, I actually think it would have been better received as its own game as opposed to part of the D&D chain. Of course, the nature of its origin story makes that impossible, but I do like the counterfactual speculation.

Yeah, but it would be DAMNED hard to make a case for Hasbro/WotC doing that game. I mean, the only viable route would be an 'M:tG RPG' that is not D&D, and it sure seems like WotC was unwilling to 'cross the streams' back in the '00s. I mean now they've kinda sorta dipped their toes in it, but even now there's not really a lot of support for the whole crossover. My feeling is it just wasn't in the cards, so some of the team were able to give 4e the sorts of features that would allow that kind of play. Frankly, had 5e actually allowed for the sort of play that 4e allows for, I'd be happy enough, I didn't need it to piss off anyone just by being different, but apparently Mike's 'big tent' wasn't that big after all. So, we will not run out of 4e books for the rest of my life anyway, and there were probably already too many out there!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Before 4e launched was there a "first look" book? I think it's been mentioned (or I made it up in my head). If there was such a book or document does anyone have any pictures from it or a legal way to look at it?

Yeah, it was an actual hardcover book. You can probably still find copies out there. I never owned one myself as I hadn't really messed with any WotC versions of D&D before 4e came out, I just bought a copy of the core books on a whim.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And I don't think Mike should be singled out here. I never got the impression that WotC fully understood exactly what they created and how it should best be used.

Yeah, I don't pretend to know what all the other devs thought or understood either. I mean, its not like H1 (KotS) is the only module that doesn't exactly shine. Honestly I have not even read the others in the HPE series, but my impression from what I read about them is that, at best, a couple of them are mediocre. Later modules definitely improved, and there were some Dungeon adventures that looked reasonable (I only really ran one of them, and it wasn't great, but a few others have been considered good). The modules released in the later period seem to have learned some lessons.

So, yeah, probably there were issues, though the guys who wrote the DMG1 and Kobold Hall, etc. seemed to at least partly get it. I mean, DMG1 has some pretty solid narrativist type stuff in it.

Adventure design is one the ways this shows. Although later adventures were slightly better than KotS, none of WotC ones really took a Zeitgeist like design of one big map story important combat in between lots of other stuff (exploration, free roleplay, investigation, etc.) which was probably 4e's sweet spot. Or spread out the right amount of XP into multiple rooms that were expected to converge so it turned into one big regular encounter.

What I found to be missing was dynamism. When I make a 4e encounter something is on fire, exploding, collapsing, running out of control, etc. Never make a static 4e battlefield! This is the game where you pretend you are Spielberg and go wild. If you wouldn't see it in Jurassic Park or Raiders of the Lost Ark, then it don't belong in 4e!

Rituals were also almost completely ignored in adventures. (and in the system in general). Imagine if

1) rituals were split into Arcane, Divine, Primal and you only got access to one list with your class (or the feat)
2) traditional full spellcasters like Wizard, Cleric, etc. got a few free Ritual casts a day and that was put into the class description in a Spells Per Day type chart. Say eventually One per day at Level -1, 2 per day at Level -2, and 3 per day at Level -3 or whatever. And got 1 free ritual added to their ritual book per level.
3) adventures assumed you might have access to some of these and enemies use them too

Rituals were such an amazing answer to "how can we have this kind of powerful utility magic that D&D is known for and not have it be tied to certain classes or too often circumvent combat encounters?". Then they completely ignored it, taking away a big part of the "feel" of prior D&D.

They aren't totally ignored, but the parcel treasure system makes players feel like they're getting ripped off when they pay the costs. Its an unfortunate psychological mis-design of 4e. Probably not something you would see until you got it out there and played a bunch, but anything with a GP cost suffers from neglect.

Being so wishy washy on explaining some of the effect first mechanics and how that works, etc. Just lay it out -- HP are not meat points, prone is a condition that represents hampering an enemy and usually that can be represented as knocked to the ground but could also...

Well, they did do that, but you aren't going to win over the usual posters on EW with that I'm afraid.

I find the "creativity/imagination" comment from above very funny, because I found 4e played much much better with players that were creative and imaginative. The kind of players that could make skill challenges work well by reacting to the fiction in a push/pull way, could help wrap a narrative around the occasional mechanics where the default narrative didn't fit perfectly, didn't have a problem using improvised actions which I could easily make worth it using p.42, never thought warlords were shouting wounds closed because they were imaginative enough to think of HPs as partly a narrative device, etc.

I thought it ENCOURAGED people to be those sorts of players. I mean, I had 4e players that just wanted tactics, and ones that just wanted to go along for the ride and not contribute much or try very hard, but EVEN THOSE people 'got it'. The two I'm thinking of did both eventually drop (one got pissed because the other players weren't optimizers, and the other just had too much else going on to keep playing). So, yeah, it didn't 100% grip everyone. OTOH I did see pretty positive results with 4e getting people's creative juices flowing. I could probably do as well with other games I like running, but it was solid.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah, it was an actual hardcover book. You can probably still find copies out there. I never owned one myself as I hadn't really messed with any WotC versions of D&D before 4e came out, I just bought a copy of the core books on a whim.

I'm not aware of a hardcover 4E preview book (at least, not off the top of my head). What was the title, if you can recall?

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm not aware of a hardcover 4E preview book (at least, not off the top of my head). What was the title, if you can recall?

I'm fairly sure that there was no hardcover. The two preview books are the two softcovers that you mentioned upthread.

 

[MockingBird]

We ran Keep on the Shadowfell when it first came out. I thought it was okay. The ending stuck out to me as something we (my gaming group) really enjoyed. I bought the second adventure but we never played it. I wasn't really wowed by it and it wasn't tied very hard to the first adventure if I remember correctly. Me and my group just couldn't get into 4e. I really wanted to but it just didn't work. I tried it a couple more times with a different group but we ended up switching to PF. I still have my 3 core books for 4e and I even bought all the Essentials books and box sets. I like to pull them out and read through them every now and then.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There were two small pre-release intro books: Worlds and Monsters was one and I forget the title of the other.

Worlds and Monsters has some rockin' artwork in it; and I was rather let down when 4e itself came out and didn't maintain that standard.

Eh, 4e artwork is overall fairly good. Some of the stylistic elements they chose to emphasize were not ones I'd have picked, like the weird lozenge style dwarven stuff, but it was pretty consistently decent, with only a few "where did THAT come from?!" kinds of moments. I mean, frankly I am still an aficionado of AD&D 1e PHB/DMG art (MM has its moments too, actually a lot of that is pretty good, some is hideous). Late 1e/2e/3e mostly never grabbed me that much. 4e art in that sense also often missed the boat, being more 'in your face action' whereas the best piece ever is the cover of the original PHB, the implied action, the story latent in the image, the slightly claustrophobic feeling of darkness pressing all around. I hold out little hope that anything will beat that in terms of being "this is D&D!" So, 4e art? It doesn't offend my eyes, and that's about all I ask! lol. Now and then it tickles the imagination, so I won't dis it.

 

[MockingBird]

Yeah I wasn't a huge fan of 4e art. It was objectively good. I don't want to offend anyone, and this is solely my opinion, but it felt too cartoony to me. I feel the same way about PF art. During the Next playtest, the few Next adventures we got (Murder in BG, Icewind Dale, and that Daggerford adventure) I really liked that art style. It felt more mature in my opinion.