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I don't play D&D.  Until the OSR I never looked twice at the rules. 

Now I'm a bit more educated about it, own quite a few PDFs.  I know the basics of D&D pretty well I would say.

But, everyone mentions that D&D 4E is the one everyone likes the least. 

What did it do that's so bad?

It was trying to emulate video games in a TTRPG format, with healing "power surges" and things like that.  I personally hated the Dragonborn and tieflings and crap, which has only gotten worse over time as the game moves further away from traditional Sword & Sorcery/mythology tropes, but I admit that's a pretty subjective view and others may like that stuff. Hated the art style, though I suppose it was OK from a technical viewpoint.  It also was a fairly poor tactical wargame/boardgame, I thought -- I knew people who praised it, but those people had never played any other kind, and I'd been playing games like that for years.  I had a couple of friends who liked it, but I really hated it.  It shouldn't have even been called Dungeons and Dragons, it was so radically different.  I didn't like 3E much either, but at least it was recognizably D & D. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 11, 2025, 11:46:40 PMWhat did it do that's so bad?

You can go to YouTube and put your thread title into the search bar. Lots of very strong opinions out there.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 11, 2025, 11:46:40 PMI don't play D&D.  Until the OSR I never looked twice at the rules. 

Now I'm a bit more educated about it, own quite a few PDFs.  I know the basics of D&D pretty well I would say.

But, everyone mentions that D&D 4E is the one everyone likes the least. 

What did it do that's so bad?

It departed far and wide from the long history, tradition, and lore of D&D.  That, and they called it D&D 4th Edition; instead of something else.  It replaced a relatively popular, and well selling previous edition of D&D.  It was a big stumble for WOTC, overall.

For me, the combat system was just really clunky with stuff like all of the marking mechanics.  it was like playing a janky MMO without the computer to track the marks, taunts and cooldowns for you.  Even at fairly low level, it was a slog.   

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 11, 2025, 11:46:40 PMI don't play D&D.  Until the OSR I never looked twice at the rules. 

Now I'm a bit more educated about it, own quite a few PDFs.  I know the basics of D&D pretty well I would say.

But, everyone mentions that D&D 4E is the one everyone likes the least. 

What did it do that's so bad?

I liked 4e. I played it and then GMed a Dark Sun campaign in the system.

The issue was, it didn't feel like D&D. It was designed to be played on a gridmap. You could hack it to work with theater of the mind, but you'd be fighting the system. Everyone's powers and spells were codified into categories like At Will (use whenever) Encounter (use once per encounter) and Daily (use once per campaign day) Everyone's powers kinda sorta worked like spells. Already mentioned is that there was a lot of conditions to track during combat. The game focused on fights and put in a really wonky Skill Challenge system that reads great on paper and is pretty trash when put into actual use. I tossed out the Skill Challenge system pretty quickly, maybe pulling it out once in a while when it made sense to use.

It's a really interesting system. Playing it felt like playing a board game or video game with some RPing in-between fights.

It's weakness is that it didn't scratch the D&D itch. And IMO that, along with Paizo creating Pathfinder to capture all the disposessed 3rd ed players sunk 4th ed.

4E worked well as fantasy combat board game. I did not find it well suited to D&D campaign play.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 12, 2025, 04:20:23 AMThe game focused on fights and put in a really wonky Skill Challenge system that reads great on paper and is pretty trash when put into actual use.

I forgot about the skill challenge thing.  It sounded good when I read it but it didn't work worth a damn in actual play.

We played 4e for a couple months upon release and converted our 3.5 campaign to it.   One of the problems we had with the initial version of 4e was that the rules for roleplaying were threadbare basically amounting to skill challenges with pretty much every power being completely combat oriented except for a few that were utility powers that were used to recover/recoup after combat (so still in a way combat oriented).  In that initial release, even low level monsters had massive HP bloat that turned them into just a giant MMO hitpoint sponge.   The game session where we literally decided to quit the game involved us taking on some goblins in a low level (3rd level?) encounter where they had 30+ hp each other than the minions.  We reached a point in the battle where we knew that the goblins couldn't win but it still took an hour and a half to resolve the combat (without the DM just waving his hand to deus ex machina the victory).   Finally, everything felt the same and there was no granularity to the characters as, in an effort to "balance" the game, WOTC decided to make all character classes/races/builds just basically copy/paste/change one stat-word-or-effect versions of each other.  There was no simple class like fighter or complex class like mage to play depending on player preference... they all played the same because they had the same number of powers that were basically just tweaked versions of each other.  A fighter was just a reskinned mage who used a different stat targeting a different save to do the same actual damage/effect.  When you combined them all, it felt in actual play like a very unnecessarily complicated boardgame (like Descent but much worse as I actually enjoyed that game) instead of an RPG.   

Supposedly some of these things got fixed (like monster HP bloat) in the mid-life cycle refresh of the edition in an attempt to save it but others were intrinsic to the design.  It wasn't all bad though (skill challenges being the relative standout) and I liked the ideas/goals behind the changes but definitely not the actual implementation.  FWIW, Star Wars Saga Edition was basically a half way step between 3.5 and 4e which test drove some of the design changes and I did actually like that game overall (with the massively front loaded skill system being the notable exception).

So, I played some 4e campaigns.

It was not a bad game.

But it had some philosophical differences form D&D, and RPGs in general, to the point some people felt is was a different sort of game (e.g., a boardgame).

I wrote a bit about the subject int he links below, but basically:

- You can trip a gelatinous cube.
- Fireballs are square.
- Grids are mandatory.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/02/tripping-oozes-in-d-3e-versus-4e-versus.html
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/does-d-require-miniatures-3e-versus-4e.html

I never played or DMd 4E so my opinion is uninformed, but the stat blocks were intimidating and looked like a pain to set up an adventure.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 12, 2025, 10:54:42 AMI never played or DMd 4E so my opinion is uninformed, but the stat blocks were intimidating and looked like a pain to set up an adventure.

I DMed 4E for about three years (which was two years longer than I really wanted to). As much as I can complain about 4E, which I don't like and don't even regard as D&D in retrospect, it was easy to DM - both the adventures WoTC sold and homebrewing your own. That was really its big initial appeal for me; I was very busy at the time professionally and 4E was a breeze to run, particularly after 3.5, which always felt like doing my taxes to me.

The game didn't feel or play like D&D. It felt like a table-top minis skirmish combat game that was designed to easily translate to a computer gaming environment. (In fact, it would probably work a lot better as a computer skirmish combat game.)

If it had simply had another name than "Dungeons and Dragons" it probably wouldn't have caught near as much grief as it did.  Those who didn't like it would have simply said "don't like" and quietly moved on.  It's like if a company said they were redesigning the classic "Dune" board game, keeping the name and everything and selling it as just an updated and improved edition, then you buy it and realize it's really "Settlers of Cataan" with Atreides and Harkonnens.  It was kind of like New Coke -- replacing a popular product with an inferior and very different one and selling it as the improved version.

My biggest beef was the mechanics that were disconnected from any in-game justification, like physical things you could only do once per day just because.  Second was that it just felt more like World of Warcraft than D&D - I was heavily into WoW at that point so the similarities were pretty obvious to me.  Aside from that there were some good things and some bad things.  As others have said, if it was named something besides "D&D" I don't think anyone would have had much of a problem with it.

4e eliminated the exploration and resource management aspects of earlier editions. Because of the powers given to each class, there was less excitement about finding a magic item in 4e than in other editions, because they (generally) didn't break the game, or give exceptional advantages to the PCs.

The books explicitly say that PCs are heroes from the start, so the "zero-to-hero" play-style is not supported.

A lot of the focus in the 4e rules was adjudicating combat, so there was less guidance about what to do outside of combat, apart from Skill Challenges, which were served up undercooked, and changed what previously was a "question and answer" session that players had with the DM into a game element (roll 6 successes before 3 failures, and use these particular skills, etc.). While it *can* be played theater of the mind style, it is geared toward using battle maps and miniatures.

Combat could take a long time if the players weren't paying attention, and weren't planning ahead, and if the DM insisted on playing battles out instead of ruling that a combat was over when the end became inevitable.

Because combat could be lengthy, it was not a game that handled exploration with random encounters very well.

The lore for Forgotten Realms was dramatically changed, to account for the changes in the magic system.

It shortened the skill list, and simplified it, so that people who liked the depth and complexity of 3e's skill system were unhappy.

WotC fumbled the marketing of 4e, and wound up insulting their customer base.

System mastery wasn't as much of a thing in 4e, because unintentionally making an ineffective character was less likely.

The "Gaming System License" was decidedly inferior for players, compared to the "Open Gaming License".

Having said all that, I am a fan of 4e, for what it is. I don't play it, now, preferring OD&D or Moldvay, but I would play or run it without any hesitation.

The Nentir Vale is one of my favorite campaign settings, and is, ironically, ideal for OD&D and "Basic D&D" rules.

Since there are varieties within monster types, a fight with one group of goblins can be different from a fight with a different group. Monsters get special abilities, like a particular kind of orc getting one last hit in, after it is dropped to zero hit points.

Use of keywords helps to resolve different situations, and makes reskinning powers, monsters, and the like, easy.

Changing Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves  to defenses (like with AC) was, in my opinion, an elegant way to handle non-physical attacks.

I like that they made a lot of the utility spells into ritual magic, which required resources and time to cast. Ritual magic was, unfortunately, not carried over into the "Essentials" line.

I like the 4e-era "Dungeon" and "Dragon" digital magazines.

The core DM book is really good—if you are running 4th Edition. I think it included a compilation of articles from "Dungeon" and "Dragon from the 3e era. It talks about the different kind of players, and what their motivations are, and how to cater to each without neglecting the others. It has em advice for dealing with problem players . It has rules for changing and creating monsters. It has information on the setting's cosmos (the "World Axis"), the excellent Nentir Vale, and the town of Fallcrest. It has a short, five-room dungeon. It has a two-page spread of a dungeon floor which the DM can print out or copy and then laminate to have a dry erase battle map. It has guidelines for creating random dungeons and random encounters.

I mentioned the fumbled marketing earlier, but they did have *one* good idea: recording a podcast of people playing 4e, which became the long-running "Acquisitions, Inc." show. Listening to season one can give one a fair idea about how 4e is played, and it helps that Mike Kruhulik, who had not played D&D before, asks a lot of questions.

I liked 4e for what it was worth. The biggest problem is that it made the game feel more like a videogame (people compared it to WoW but I played WoW after 4e and it was nothing alike other than powers being roughly like abilities and having "party roles" like tank, healer, etc.) or a tactical combat game than an RPG. Overall though it wasn't as bad as people claim, it was mostly just such a different approach to the game that it was basically unrecognizable as "D&D".

It would have been 100% better had they done it as a side game, like how back in the day you had D&D and then like Dragon Strike or Dungeon or those not-quite-D&D boardgames that had some D&D-lite elements.

In short, it took the roleplaying support infrastructure of rules out of a roleplaying game, turned it into a miniatures skirmish game, and insulted the fans whose patronage had brought WotC it's success up to that point.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 12, 2025, 03:25:01 AMFor me, the combat system was just really clunky with stuff like all of the marking mechanics.  it was like playing a janky MMO without the computer to track the marks, taunts and cooldowns for you.  Even at fairly low level, it was a slog.   

No. Its like playing a janky skirmish wargame/board game. Theres a reason why board gamers latched onto 4e so hard.

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2025, 07:49:26 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 12, 2025, 03:25:01 AMFor me, the combat system was just really clunky with stuff like all of the marking mechanics.  it was like playing a janky MMO without the computer to track the marks, taunts and cooldowns for you.  Even at fairly low level, it was a slog.   

No. Its like playing a janky skirmish wargame/board game. Theres a reason why board gamers latched onto 4e so hard.

Both can be true at the same time FWIW.  It was designed to resemble an MMO in theory with WOW being at its height then but played like an overly complicated clunky and slow board game in practice since obviously there was no CPU automatically keeping track of everything to speed it up.

One of my friends had it and I looked through the book.

The problems I saw are these.

1: the biggest one. This is NOT D&D. This is a totally new system with some of the trappings of D&D glued on.
1a: Classes function absolutely differently. You have "encounter" powers, used once per fight. "Daily" powers used once a day. And "At-Will" powers useable every round. Every class worked off the same spread-sheet-like menu and all were very limited in choices, if any.
1b: The system is VERY board-gamey. wotc really pushed the need for maps and tokens to play this. It at least does that fairly well from all accounts.

2: The book was hindered by using MMO speak which makes everyone think thats that this system is emulating. It isnt. Its a skirmish wargame/board game.

3: The book suffers from GNS/Forge cult doctrine that was prevalent at the time.

4: It developed one of the most hateful fanbases ever. These fuckwits drove off any stragglers who had not quit already.

x: All that said. It is a rather balanced system and that is what I keep hearing board gamers practically chanting "Its balanced!" Strip away the veneer of an RPG and thats what you have.

X: Gamma World for 4e might have been an abject failure. But it and from what I hear, 4e Essentials both rework the system to be a bit more RPG and a bit less board game.

Think that coveres everything know personal and gleaned from others.

One think I liked about 4e is how it was aware of the issues with action economy and scaling monsters when they outnumber or are outnumbered. "Elite" monsters were meant to be a solo boss against a party, and their abilities reflected this. You got a bit of this in AD&D where monsters like dragons had multiple attacks since they were likely to be solo against a party, but 4e made it explicit.
Then there were "Minions", with 1 HP and rules on how to run them as cannon fodder.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 12, 2025, 09:01:55 PMOne think I liked about 4e is how it was aware of the issues with action economy and scaling monsters when they outnumber or are outnumbered. "Elite" monsters were meant to be a solo boss against a party, and their abilities reflected this. You got a bit of this in AD&D where monsters like dragons had multiple attacks since they were likely to be solo against a party, but 4e made it explicit.
Then there were "Minions", with 1 HP and rules on how to run them as cannon fodder.

I loved the minion rule, one of the best things they added; it let you have "fodder" monsters that were still deadly as they hit just as hard, just died to a single hit so you could "pad" encounters. I plan to adopt a version of it based on Scarlet Heroes whenever I run any sort of RPG.

Agreed.  The minion rule was interesting and novel for me at the time as well and I forgot to mention it above.  That and skill challenges were the big takeaways for me for the edition but obviously didn't even come close to balancing out the majority that I didn't enjoy.

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2025, 07:49:26 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 12, 2025, 03:25:01 AMFor me, the combat system was just really clunky with stuff like all of the marking mechanics.  it was like playing a janky MMO without the computer to track the marks, taunts and cooldowns for you.  Even at fairly low level, it was a slog.   

No. Its like playing a janky skirmish wargame/board game. Theres a reason why board gamers latched onto 4e so hard.

My problem as a DM for 4e was that I'm good at skirmish/battle games. I've played SFB, FedCom, BattleTech (CBT & AS), B5Wars, various GW games, Warzone, and many others. When I play them, I play to win and I often do. When I don't win, I always make a good showing (if it were 'real' the opponent would often achieve a Pyrrhic victory at best). Unfortunately for my players, when running pre-made 4e adventures, I kept going into mini-gamer mode and inflicted many character deaths and more than a few TPKs. This was with a group that often powergamed their builds, but they then often lost their shit on the battlegrid. This is why I typically GM games in TotM, but with 4e it seemed to pull heavily toward miniatures and grid.

Greetings!

All the crying and tap dancing should stop. Hell, we have a board member here who was an employee of WOTC, and he explicitly said that WOTC intentionally designed 4E to be like WOW.

Beyond that, I played WOW for years. Myself, and many, many others, all saw the inspirations and similarities between 4E and WOW. YOU may get your wires in a twist about it, but you are in a minority. Many other gamers with considerable experience all explain the close similarities between 4E and WOW, and also point to those same similarities and inspirations as some of the reasons they didn't like 4E.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Heaven forbid the designers try to incorporate elements from what was at the time the largest video game in the world.  However, it was really Final Fantasy Tactics more than anything especially as you got higher in level.  Combat was all about setting up chain combos.

I actually did quite enjoy playing and running it.  I can agree with most here that it didn't feel anything like actual D&D but it scratched that Exalted itch better than Exalted.  Plus of course there's a mook rule given who helped create the game!

I also believe that it's out of combat system was actually much better than people gave it credit for.  It was very rules light in that regard and the rules that were there tended to support play rather than hinder it.  The concept of anyone being able to pick up ritual casting and to do it given enough time and resources was very interesting.  The sliding difficulty scale was a welcome addition from Earthdawn that made figuring out difficulties very easy (but wasn't well explained and proved very hard for even long time DMs to pick up).

Finally the setting was all kinds of awesome.  It was hard to pull together because it was scattered across all the books but it was very rewarding to put it all together.  Torog and the new underdark was metal AF.

Quote from: KingCheops on January 12, 2025, 11:53:20 PMFinally the setting was all kinds of awesome.  It was hard to pull together because it was scattered across all the books but it was very rewarding to put it all together.  Torog and the new underdark was metal AF.

Despite having five alignments, the world was set up as a "Law versus Chaos" universe, with the Primordials and demons being creatures of chaos that hated the world and wanted to rip it apart, while the Gods and their servants being the defenders of the world. The backstory of the good god who was allowed to be betrayed by Asmodeus so that the war against the primordials could be won, and whose name had been stamped out, was ready made for an epic campaign to revive and restore him. (My head canon is that this god-"He Who Was"—allowed himself to be betrayed, so that his shattered essence could become the powerful primordial spirits that arose after the Dawn War to chase both gods and primordials from the world).

Fallcrest has everything a DM needs for a base town for his or her players, including tragic backstory and nearby dungeon ("Kobold Hall").

The Vale is scattered with empty manor houses filled with treasure and monsters, perfect for a "dungeon of the week" style of play.

The introduction of the Feywild and the Shadowfell as mirror worlds of the main world. One, a beautiful but weird domain of the Fair Folk, the other a dark and morose (but not necessarily evil) land of undead creatures.

The "Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale" added all sorts of extra flavored goodness, like factions and named monsters. The painting of "The Hurley Burley Brothers" is one of my favorites from that book. A pair of trolls arguing over a recently killed stag, while autumn leaves are blown around them.

This is a campaign setting worth exploring, regardless which rule set one uses.

The 4e setting was actually great. It explained why dragonborn and tieflings were part of the setting, not shoehorning them in, the pantheon was so good that Matt mercer stole it wholesale for Critical Role (just later changing names to generic ones when Exandria was published). I wish they ha done more with it, it was actually a brand new setting in the vein of the originals (points of light, etc) and they should have kept it as the default D&D setting.

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2025, 08:07:34 PM3: The book suffers from GNS/Forge cult doctrine that was prevalent at the time.

I've seen this stated elsewhere, but I never understood this claim. The level of crunch and emphasis on tactical combat seems like it's the polar opposite of the Storygame emphasis of the Forge. I sort of get how it aligns with the "G" part of GNS, but narrative takes a back seat to combat and tactics, and the only thing 4E simulated was a weird tabletop version of WoW.

Can elaborate on how 4E promoted GNS and/or the theories promoted on The Forge?



Lou Prosperi

Quote from: LouProsperi on January 13, 2025, 10:23:40 AMCan elaborate on how 4E promoted GNS and/or the theories promoted on The Forge?



Lou Prosperi

  As far as I can tell, the reasoning is one part 'it feels gamist!' and three parts: The Pundit hates 4E. The Pundit hates the Forge. QED. :D

  4E is, IMO, a decent core in itself, but released a year too early from both a design and a market perspective, too divergent from the D&D tradition, and continues the long-standing WotC pattern of Too Much Asmodeus.

I've never experienced 4e and I don't care to. The further from video games my tabletop games can be, the better.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 13, 2025, 12:16:13 PM

Quote from: LouProsperi on January 13, 2025, 10:23:40 AMCan elaborate on how 4E promoted GNS and/or the theories promoted on The Forge?



Lou Prosperi

  As far as I can tell, the reasoning is one part 'it feels gamist!' and three parts: The Pundit hates 4E. The Pundit hates the Forge. QED. :D

  4E is, IMO, a decent core in itself, but released a year too early from both a design and a market perspective, too divergent from the D&D tradition, and continues the long-standing WotC pattern of Too Much Asmodeus.

I suspect your guess at the reasoning is correct, but I want to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

I like it as a game but (a) the monster stats were mostly borked (MM3 was ok) (b) it is nothing like D&D and cannot be used to run a D&D campaign. Dragonbane or Runequest are far closer to D&D. 4e is designed for a kind of cinematic board game experience and works best if you think Fantastic Four or The Avengers.

Quote from: LouProsperi on January 13, 2025, 10:23:40 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2025, 08:07:34 PM3: The book suffers from GNS/Forge cult doctrine that was prevalent at the time.

I've seen this stated elsewhere, but I never understood this claim. The level of crunch and emphasis on tactical combat seems like it's the polar opposite of the Storygame emphasis of the Forge. I sort of get how it aligns with the "G" part of GNS, but narrative takes a back seat to combat and tactics, and the only thing 4E simulated was a weird tabletop version of WoW.

Can elaborate on how 4E promoted GNS and/or the theories promoted on The Forge?

Lou Prosperi

GNS didn't just push Narrativism, it also said that a game has to have a Creative Agenda. For 4e that would be Gamist; discarding all the traditional Simulationist elements of D&D. I think Forge influence on 4e was actually fairly light though but Wyatt's "Skip To the Fun!" rant in the 4e DMG was reminiscent of Forge anti-simulation rhetoric.

If you like a tactical skirmish game where every action feels like tapping a magic card then it is the game for you. Personally I prefer RPGs.

I never played 4e. From what I could tell from reading the two Wizards Presents preview booklets, it had a lot of interesting ideas: firmly defining class roles and power sources, making the planes far more gameable than they were even in Planescape, revising nonsensical sacred cows like the Demon/Devil divide...

Unfortunately, it made a lot of bad choices that alienated players. This included both rules like deliberately emulating MMOs and miniatures games to the exclusion of roleplaying, as well as presentation gaffs like that godawful video where a tiefling mocks a gnome (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo).

Fortunately, what good ideas 4e had have been incorporated into 13th Age for the most part.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2025, 12:46:39 PMUnfortunately, it made a lot of bad choices that alienated players. This included both rules like deliberately emulating MMOs and miniatures games to the exclusion of roleplaying, as well as presentation gaffs like that godawful video where a tiefling mocks a gnome (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo).

I loved that video, lol.    I'm a monster... Rawwwr!  :)   I think I had more fun watching that little flash animation back in the day then I did with all my 4e games combined.  :(

One aspect of 4E that is rarely mentioned as that it was designed in conjunction with a revised version of the D&D miniatures game. Beyond all the MMO trappings, it was meant as a vehicle to get more people buying minis, (repeat purchases). The entire D&D mini game had an edition change to as part of the lead up to 4E.

4E was driven more by WotC trying to get more revenue from the player base by selling "tactile" aids (dungeon tiles, minis, a online subscription to the character builder, etc..) In many ways Neu-D&D is following the very same course.

 

I think 4e would be better; if you only used monsters from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog, and played in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting for 4e.

Just something different, from 3e or 5e.

If I was Wizards of the Coast I'd rerelease 4E as a new version of Gamma World and release it as Creative Commons. Sounds like it'd work pretty well with a few changes to monsters and tech.

There's  absolutely nothing wrong with 4th edition, it just wasn't D&D. If I buy fries I don't want to be given tater tots, not because I don't like tater tots but I ordered fries.

Quote from: S'mon on January 13, 2025, 03:39:34 PM

Quote from: LouProsperi on January 13, 2025, 10:23:40 AM

Quote from: Omega on January 12, 2025, 08:07:34 PM3: The book suffers from GNS/Forge cult doctrine that was prevalent at the time.

...
Can elaborate on how 4E promoted GNS and/or the theories promoted on The Forge?
...

GNS didn't just push Narrativism, it also said that a game has to have a Creative Agenda. For 4e that would be Gamist; discarding all the traditional Simulationist elements of D&D. I think Forge influence on 4e was actually fairly light though but Wyatt's "Skip To the Fun!" rant in the 4e DMG was reminiscent of Forge anti-simulation rhetoric.

"GNS/The Forge" influencing 4e design is not a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory.

From Ron Edwards himself:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=209.0

Quote"Any system thoughts? Sure! But you know them already. Mike Mearls was one of the original three guys including me who floated the idea of the Forge in 1999, and Rob Heinsoo was an active participant there. It's no surprise that I'm finding the game so appealing. ..."

I picked up the 4e PHB and started reading. I don't think I finished reading the book. I never played it.

The reframing for MMO players was enough to tell me that WotC didn't want me as a customer. It isn't that I didn't like MMOs but, I don't play a tabletop RPG to have an MMO like experience.

My 3.5 games were going just fine, then Pathfinder came out. We converted over to Pathfinder 1e.

Quote from: Jaeger on January 21, 2025, 10:07:45 PM"GNS/The Forge" influencing 4e design is not a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory.

From Ron Edwards himself:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=209.0

Quote"Any system thoughts? Sure! But you know them already. Mike Mearls was one of the original three guys including me who floated the idea of the Forge in 1999, and Rob Heinsoo was an active participant there. It's no surprise that I'm finding the game so appealing. ..."

  OK, that's information I didn't have, and strongly suggests Forge influence on the game's design. Having never engaged with either the Forge or MMOs, it's no surprise I'm blind to the purported resemblances. :)

Is this some sort of anniversary for 4e or something that news on it keeps popping up recently?   No idea about the site as I've never heard of it but this link/article crossed my path this morning during the daily round up...

https://therpggazette.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/the-dd-4th-edition-rennaissaince-a-look-into-the-history-of-the-edition-its-flaws-and-its-merits/

Quote from: RNGm on January 22, 2025, 09:12:10 AMIs this some sort of anniversary for 4e or something that news on it keeps popping up recently?   No idea about the site as I've never heard of it but this link/article crossed my path this morning during the daily round up...

I suspect it's related to the release of 2024 edition. People thinking back at what was, what could have been, what won't be missed.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 21, 2025, 02:32:08 PMIf I was Wizards of the Coast I'd rerelease 4E as a new version of Gamma World and release it as Creative Commons. Sounds like it'd work pretty well with a few changes to monsters and tech.

Oddly enough I just read on wikipedia, regarding Gamma World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_World) that "The seventh version uses a streamlined version of D&D 4th edition mechanics." So my ignorance wasn't too far off. To bad they didn't leave D&D alone and push the new mechanics there to test them and see how accepted they would be.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 22, 2025, 10:33:11 AM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 21, 2025, 02:32:08 PMIf I was Wizards of the Coast I'd rerelease 4E as a new version of Gamma World and release it as Creative Commons. Sounds like it'd work pretty well with a few changes to monsters and tech.

Oddly enough I just read on wikipedia, regarding Gamma World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_World) that "The seventh version uses a streamlined version of D&D 4th edition mechanics." So my ignorance wasn't too far off. To bad they didn't leave D&D alone and push the new mechanics there to test them and see how accepted they would be.

  An earlier version of the changes was tested in Star Wars Saga Edition, and was generally well-received. I think 4E went a bit farther afield and wound up losing some of the things that made SWSE successful.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 22, 2025, 10:18:12 AM

Quote from: RNGm on January 22, 2025, 09:12:10 AMIs this some sort of anniversary for 4e or something that news on it keeps popping up recently?   No idea about the site as I've never heard of it but this link/article crossed my path this morning during the daily round up...

I suspect it's related to the release of 2024 edition. People thinking back at what was, what could have been, what won't be missed.

I think that linked article I posted summed it up well in that it's attained cult-like status with alot of influential people in the RPG space (the "fart sniffing" crowd in classic South Park terminology).  Last year, it felt like there was a definite resurgence of interest due to post-OGL debacle RPG projects by that same crowd.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 22, 2025, 10:35:02 AM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 22, 2025, 10:33:11 AM

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 21, 2025, 02:32:08 PMIf I was Wizards of the Coast I'd rerelease 4E as a new version of Gamma World and release it as Creative Commons. Sounds like it'd work pretty well with a few changes to monsters and tech.

Oddly enough I just read on wikipedia, regarding Gamma World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_World) that "The seventh version uses a streamlined version of D&D 4th edition mechanics." So my ignorance wasn't too far off. To bad they didn't leave D&D alone and push the new mechanics there to test them and see how accepted they would be.

  An earlier version of the changes was tested in Star Wars Saga Edition, and was generally well-received. I think 4E went a bit farther afield and wound up losing some of the things that made SWSE successful.

I can vouch for that as I was one of the folks in that camp.  I was running a SWSE campaign and liked alot of the changes (other than the very easily abusable and front loaded skill system it had) and was excitedly looking forward to 4e at the time because of it.  WOTC wasn't hiding the fact that they were using SWSE to test run mechanics and even flat out said so in various promotional materials (website articles and maybe even the preview "making of 4e" book they came out with prior to 4e's official release).   Unfortunately, the end product felt like it went full tard though when the next group I was a part of (since I moved across the country in the interim) finally ended up trying it.

It was a wargame mixed with an MMO. It was a developmental step backward from D&D 3.5.

Quote from: RNGm on January 22, 2025, 12:20:39 PMI can vouch for that as I was one of the folks in that camp.  I was running a SWSE campaign and liked alot of the changes (other than the very easily abusable and front loaded skill system it had) and was excitedly looking forward to 4e at the time because of it.  WOTC wasn't hiding the fact that they were using SWSE to test run mechanics and even flat out said so in various promotional materials (website articles and maybe even the preview "making of 4e" book they came out with prior to 4e's official release).   Unfortunately, the end product felt like it went full tard though when the next group I was a part of (since I moved across the country in the interim) finally ended up trying it.

  There's a whole blurb about it in Wizards Presents: Races and Classes, yes. And while SWSE had its flaws, I greatly enjoyed the two mini-campaigns I played of it over the years.

   4E fixed some of the math goofs in SWSE, but it also left out a lot of noncombat widgets, which helped make PCs feel overly combat-focused. I think the demise of the condition track(s), combined with the inflated HP values, probably contributed to the 'combat as slog' feeling as well.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 22, 2025, 05:09:19 PMThere's a whole blurb about it in Wizards Presents: Races and Classes, yes. And while SWSE had its flaws, I greatly enjoyed the two mini-campaigns I played of it over the years.

   4E fixed some of the math goofs in SWSE, but it also left out a lot of noncombat widgets, which helped make PCs feel overly combat-focused. I think the demise of the condition track(s), combined with the inflated HP values, probably contributed to the 'combat as slog' feeling as well.

Agreed.  It felt to me that SWSE just needed tweaking/fine tuning for a fantasy game (and addressing its own issues) instead of being less than a half way step to what would eventually become 4e.  Thanks for confirming the blurb in that book as well as my memory was foggy.  I couldn't remember if it was for sure in there or if I was just conflating WOTC webpage articles with it. 

Quote from: Jaeger on January 21, 2025, 10:07:45 PM"GNS/The Forge" influencing 4e design is not a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory.

From Ron Edwards himself:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=209.0

Quote"Any system thoughts? Sure! But you know them already. Mike Mearls was one of the original three guys including me who floated the idea of the Forge in 1999, and Rob Heinsoo was an active participant there. It's no surprise that I'm finding the game so appealing. ..."

Just because Ron Edwards claims something doesn't mean that it's true. I'd take it with a huge grain of salt, like most of his claims. He was big on self-promotion, and would sometimes talk grandiosely about his own importance. He did to be a fan of OD&D back when D&D was explicitly a miniatures game, and liked to say that games should focus on their core creative agenda. i.e. Gamist RPGs should focus on being more gamist.

So I'd agree that it was philosophically aligned - but it could easily have been simply a result of the dominant influences of MMORPGs and CCGs, and not from Edwards at all.

I played 4e a few times a month for a good 8-12 months maybe? When it first came out? I always thought it was a nice little fantasy skirmishes or fantasy "chess" type game, or maybe a great "advanced" HeroQuest, but a terrible version of D&D. My experience with the "organized play" via Living Forgotten Realms (or was it Greyhawk?) with more than like 20-30 people and a brief home campaign was that was that people almost never played creatively. It was mostly staring at a list of optimized power trees and going through the motions. If not, that battle with the orcs might take live five hours instead of only four!