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