The End of 4e D&D.

[FatR]

"Magic items are tools of the trade, necessary to stay on RNG" idea is shit. Even if it is mechanical reality, it is still shit. From balance/playability viewpoint it is shit because if certain amount of plusses from equipment is so necessary to stay level-appropriate, that the game expects you to have it, then these plusses should be just built-in right into your normal level growth bonuses, to avoid needless complexity on your charsheet. From thematic viewpoint, well, if I need to explain why christmas tree syndrome is shit thematically, then you probably need to read some fantasy. The whole idea should stay in CRPGs - the model of investing effort into grinding for superior equipment, which makes christmas tree characters somewhat fun on the screen, loses its point entirely the instant party balance-ensuring mechanics like WBL and its 4E equivalent come into play. Any talk about magic items being special and awesome is laughable as long as they are mandatory just for keeping up with the challenges.

[Lago PARANOIA]

3rd edition was also vastly better about this.

Which just goes to show you how awful 4E's system is, because 3rd Edition's WBL awfulness is so bad that they had to make several new words to describe the depths of its lousiness.

4E's treasure system is so bad that they had to travel forward in time to when mutated intelligent ants rule the planet, make our anthropoid descendants play Chrono Cross, and then copypaste their reactions from the hivemind onto a description of 4E to describe what a big pile of fail it is.

[Lance Twillman]

- How the hell could Frank have missed the extremely punitive GSL system?

Sorry for the ignorance, but what does GSL stand for? And WBL?

- Okay, we had a couple of bad *writers* but on the whole we're the tops!

And that's the problem right there. They hired *writers* instead of *designers*. Noonan did mechanics and now he's doing "narrative stuff". That almost certainly means he got into this gig because he wants to *write*. And got hired because of his *writing* skills.

I see this problem in computer games too. Job offers for writers and game designer both often fall under the "designer" job description. The guy who writes quests for WOW probably has "designer" on his business card, even though he's really a writer.

But this problem is actually worse in tabletop games. At least half the problem with 4E is that it is NEEDLESSLY complicated and grindy, tracking all those +1's and initiative and which round they end on, etc. A computer game can cover up those problems by tracking all the buffs for you.

[Lance Twillman]

Before I always enjoyed the commentary about RPGs here (and remembered reading when Frank & K made the tomes which I thought were quite well-done).

"Tomes"?

Link?

ty

[Korwin]

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48453
Its a sticky thread...

[Maxus]

Before I always enjoyed the commentary about RPGs here (and remembered reading when Frank & K made the tomes which I thought were quite well-done).

"Tomes"?

Link?

ty

GSL is...Gaming Something License? It's the license people have to follow to legally use 4e stuff.

WBL is Wealth By Level. How much loot your character is supposed to have when they're level X.

The Tomes are a bunch of patch fixes for rules in 3.x D&D.

The order (and what's in 'em) is:

Tome of Necromancy--Some necromancy feats, PrCs, thoughts, and templates to make Necromancy more accessible to players.

Tome of Friends--A few fiendish classes, and a lot of Build-your-own-fiend, as well as discussions of some of Good/Evil, Law/Chaos, and other suggestions for things like "Why do demons want to come here anyway?"

Dungeonomicon--Base class rewrites for Monk, Assassin, Thief-Acrobat, and Jester. Talking about Dungeons and why you want to use them, notes on economy and empires and cultural interactions.

Races of War--Martial base class rewrites (Fighter, Barbarian, Samurai, and Knight), new feat system and a ton of feats under that system, and discussions of how wars go in D&D.

[Lance Twillman]

One would question why rope trick was in the game if people resting wherever and whenever they wanted was not wanted.

The fact that Rope Trick survived through 3.5 means either:

1) Tweet et. al. explicitly wanted to legislate the 5-minute workday

OR

2) They are really, really, really, really dumb.

[Username17]

The fact that Rope Trick survived through 3.5 means

Actually comparatively little. Rope Trick is really only an issue in the level 7+ world where you rely upon 3rd level and higher spells in combat almost exclusively. Before that, Rope Trick is just a slightly better version of Alarm - the expenditure of a spell slot that could have been a combat turning spell (like web) to make the DM less likely to bone you with random encounters during your rests.

It's a spell for bullshit dungeon crawls, and it never used to matter much because of how the previous editions worked. And in 3e it still doesn't make any difference until you get into the levels where the 3e team stopped playtests, so there's no reason to believe they thought about it at all.

-Username17

[Swordslinger]

2) They are really, really, really, really dumb.

This.

As bad as 4E is, it at least had some design basis behind it.

3E was just design by monkeys at typewriters. It's the reason that the majority of feats, spells and classes are total garbage.

They really had no idea where 3E was going.

[Emerald]

The fact that Rope Trick survived through 3.5 means either:

1) Tweet et. al. explicitly wanted to legislate the 5-minute workday

OR

2) They are really, really, really, really dumb.

OR

3) The purpose of 3e was not to balance/change 2e, but rather to swap out the core mechanics of roll over or under/THAC0/NWPs to always roll over/AC/skills and leave everything else the same.

Everything in early 3e points to the devs only being concerned about preserving the 2e experience with their new core. They only playtested the blaster/healbot/S&B/thief party, and only up to level 10ish, because that's what worked in 2e and what (supposedly) everyone played. Half to 3/4 the stuff in the books was directly copy-pasted, including rope trick, which has that line about dangerous extradimensional spaces despite the fact that the only extradimensional kablooey interaction in 3e is the bag of holding + portable hole one.

You're assuming WotC had a game-design-based agenda for their new edition. They didn't. They didn't care about the 5-minute workday at all; they most likely figured "It worked in 2e, it should work fine in 3e, because our game will work the same way." Granted, their execution of this direct translation concept completely sucked, but we can at least chalk that up to bad design goals rather than blatant and rampant stupidity.

[Psychic Robot]

it's probably a combination between "retarded" and "preserve 2e experience." what's pathfinder's excuse then?

[CapnTthePirateG]

One would question why rope trick was in the game if people resting wherever and whenever they wanted was not wanted.

The fact that Rope Trick survived through 3.5 means either:

1) Tweet et. al. explicitly wanted to legislate the 5-minute workday

OR

2) They are really, really, really, really dumb.

Wait, rope trick's in 4e? Where?

[ScottS]

Wait, rope trick's in 4e? Where?

lv 12 ritual MoP; earlier/more common version was Exodus Knife (lv 12 wond item AV1)

[Windjammer]

Bill Slavicsek leaves WotC:

No preview of an upcoming product this month. No R&D secrets to reveal. Not really. Instead, I wanted to let you know that I’m leaving Wizards of the Coast. It’s time for my next adventure.

It’s hard to believe that I first entered the hallowed halls of TSR, Inc. in the long-ago year of 1993. I was the new kid on the block back then, even though I had seven years of professional work behind me at the time and a handful of industry awards already to my credit. Some of the greats were still on the staff back then, people whose work I admired and played in my formative years, including Zeb Cook, Jeff Grubb, and Jim Ward. My first projects were set in the Dungeons & Dragons worlds of Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Planescape, and I couldn’t have been happier. It was a gamer’s (and game designer’s) dream come true. As time went on, I got the plum assignment of lead designer for the Alternity Science Fiction Roleplaying Game, working with co-designer Rich Baker and editor extreme Kim Mohan. It was a great time.

In 1997, Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR and moved me and a bunch of the staff out to Seattle. Shortly thereafter, I was promoted to Director of R&D for Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with a talented group of creative people over the years, and we accomplished such feats as launching both the 3rd and 4th editions of the D&D roleplaying game, creating d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars, launching painted plastic miniatures for D&D, creating new worlds such as Eberron and the D&D Core World, and most recently launching a new category of D&D board games that started with Castle Ravenloft. I can’t wait to see what they do next! I know that whatever it is, it will be great and I will be playing it.

My professional time with D&D may be coming to an end, but the game and its worlds will always be near and dear to my heart. I am a gamer, first and foremost, and it’s the game I always go back to for inspiration and fun. So, until our paths cross again, do what I’m still doing and … Keep playing!

From here:

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... 3ampersand

Further sources at Enworld confirm that Michelle Carter and Stephen Schubert were let go too.

[K]

It's kinda sad. He's now unemployed and has no transferable skills.

[malak]

It's kinda sad. He's now unemployed and has no transferable skills.

It's really sad. I wonder if the latest 4e products really sold so badly, or if there were some internal conflicts...

[sabs]

Who can say, that guy is responsible for 3.5E and 4E.

He's responsible for 3E and D20 modern, so I guess he's not a complete loser. But he's close.

[Username17]

The interesting part is where WotC responded to condemnations of their annual "Christmas Layoffs" by moving the layoffs to Summer. Last year's layoffs were summertime as well.

-Username17

[CapnTthePirateG]

So who all is left?

[souran]

It's kinda sad. He's now unemployed and has no transferable skills.

didn't a whole lot of the people who were 3.Xer's end up at Piazzo? I thought I saw that there were a lot of the 3.x designers now working for Paizo.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I wonder how much money Hasbro is going to shell out to try to attract the old team, assume they don't contract a case of the derps and just let the product go down the drain?

[hogarth]

didn't a whole lot of the people who were 3.Xer's end up at Piazzo? I thought I saw that there were a lot of the 3.x designers now working for Paizo.

I wouldn't phrase it that way. Some people (e.g. Erik Mona, James Jacobs) were working at Paizo in the Dragon/Dungeon era while simultaneously doing freelance work in 3.5 (e.g. Fiendish Codex, Red Hand of Doom). Another couple of WotC jobbers joined Paizo later (e.g. Sean K Reynolds, Stephen Radney-Macfarland). Others have made some minor contributions without being full-time employees (e.g. Monte Cook).

Paizo doesn't really have a "lot" of employees, period.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, if Slavicsek got the pink slip, it's only a matter of time until mearls is out on his ass. And when that guy finally gets fired, what's going to happen to 4th Edition D&D? Would it be fine to declare it a dead edition?

My prediction for 4E D&D being dead by Spring/Summer 2012 is still on.

[erik]

what's going to happen to 4th Edition D&D? Would it be fine to declare it a dead edition?

If they use freelancers-only to create more material should we call it an undead edition?

[CapnTthePirateG]

Well, what's it doing now? My friend, who's into 4e, didn't know about the "heroes of shadow" book (which someone on here should do a review of, if they have it) and I don't really know any groups in my area playing 4e (anecdotal, I know). But is there anything scheduled to come out after it?

Also, I occasionally read the WoTC forums to check how long it is until 4e dies. It doesn't seem good over there, because they have managed to split their remaining fanbase into 4rry original and 4.5rry. This is, of course, with a huge competitor for 4e D&D being....their old edition and Pathfinder. Hell, the reason we play Pathfinder in these parts is because the PF DM straight up said that it felt like more support for 3.5 (I know the problems with PF, don't bother reiterating em). And it's not like any 3.5 money is going to WoTC because people are torrenting that shit - the dumbasses at Wizards disconnected the legitimate way of getting PDFs. Half the shit for 4e is behind a subscription barrier, which 4rries are getting less and less willing to pay for because WotC, as usual, fucked it up. They don't have any super cool new ideas, no one knows the fucking rules anymore because they issue errata every 3.5 seconds, and now most of the major designers are gone. Let's face it, the freelancers probably won't design anything awesome (I know there's Ari Marmell, and while he seems like a pretty nice guy over on EnWorld, he also gave us the Tome of Magic shadowcaster. Yeah, that one) so I don't really see too many people jumping into 4rry land. The grognards Essentials were trying to attract already HAD their game systems, and Essentials - fuck it, 4.5 - has already pissed off a sensible majority of the 4rries.

On the other hand, how exactly do you release a 5th edition without pissing off the entire fanbase? "We admit it. 4e sucked donkey balls. Fortunately, we're going to try again, the same company with an inability to playtest. Yeah, only 3 years after the new edition. Hell, yeah, we're pulling this shit. Also, we're raising the book prices to $39.95, and including MOAR FLUFF! Suck it, bitches!"

Yeah, I don't see it working either.