OSSR: 4th edition D&D.
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- Invincible Overlord
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I know it's hindsight and all, but what never ceases to amaze me about 4E D&D is how the game designers clearly had sustainability in mind as a design goal but then did everything they could to destroy it's longevity. They:
[*] Made the vision of skill challenges so narrow that even if the math did work and there were enough skills and the framework less full of fail and etc., people would still get sick of them after a few years.
[*] Put classes on such a strict schedule of advancement that every level 1 - 30 journey feels the same. Even when 4E D&D tried experimenting with different resource management schemes (i.e. the psionic classes) you still advanced in the same way.
[*] Steadfastly refused to have a standard campaign setting. Shit happens all over the place in adventure paths, new items and feats and races get released all of the time, and no one sees any connection. The adventure paths had some legitimately cool ideas in them (i.e. what if your low-level Dark Sun characters came across a hidden source of fresh water; what if your mid-level characters fought a personification of evil so hard that it erased the vice of jealousy forever) but no one gave a fuck because they weren't connected to the broader metaplot.
[*] Related to the above, released no hardcover books unlike 5E and Pathfinder. These are in my opinion important to have long-term loyalty to a brand because it gives people an idea of what's supposed to happen in the zero to hero journey of D&D. You start out as nobodies and then have interconnected adventures that make you a somebody. What's more, you have a frame of reference to talk to other people about. As much as I rag upon 5E D&D for being unoriginal and a step back, they did get basic brand loyalty shit right. Acerak is the super-lich in 5E D&D, not Szass Tam. Tiamat is the Fight A God of 5E D&D, not Orcus. Giants are the signature enemy faction of 5E D&D, not dragons and orcs.
4E D&D wasn't just designed as a shovelware engine, it was designed as a shovelware engine that was supposed to last for a long time.
[*] Made the vision of skill challenges so narrow that even if the math did work and there were enough skills and the framework less full of fail and etc., people would still get sick of them after a few years.
[*] Put classes on such a strict schedule of advancement that every level 1 - 30 journey feels the same. Even when 4E D&D tried experimenting with different resource management schemes (i.e. the psionic classes) you still advanced in the same way.
[*] Steadfastly refused to have a standard campaign setting. Shit happens all over the place in adventure paths, new items and feats and races get released all of the time, and no one sees any connection. The adventure paths had some legitimately cool ideas in them (i.e. what if your low-level Dark Sun characters came across a hidden source of fresh water; what if your mid-level characters fought a personification of evil so hard that it erased the vice of jealousy forever) but no one gave a fuck because they weren't connected to the broader metaplot.
[*] Related to the above, released no hardcover books unlike 5E and Pathfinder. These are in my opinion important to have long-term loyalty to a brand because it gives people an idea of what's supposed to happen in the zero to hero journey of D&D. You start out as nobodies and then have interconnected adventures that make you a somebody. What's more, you have a frame of reference to talk to other people about. As much as I rag upon 5E D&D for being unoriginal and a step back, they did get basic brand loyalty shit right. Acerak is the super-lich in 5E D&D, not Szass Tam. Tiamat is the Fight A God of 5E D&D, not Orcus. Giants are the signature enemy faction of 5E D&D, not dragons and orcs.
4E D&D wasn't just designed as a shovelware engine, it was designed as a shovelware engine that was supposed to last for a long time.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Sat Mar 09, 2019 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Weren't previous editions just as guilty of that though? There was Dragonlance and Eberron and Forgotten Realms and none of those were actually in the first core books and didn't really mix in between that well and there was no "connected to the broader metaplot" either as far as I remember.Lago PARANOIA wrote: [*] Steadfastly refused to have a standard campaign setting. Shit happens all over the place in adventure paths, new items and feats and races get released all of the time, and no one sees any connection. The adventure paths had some legitimately cool ideas in them (i.e. what if your low-level Dark Sun characters came across a hidden source of fresh water; what if your mid-level characters fought a personification of evil so hard that it erased the vice of jealousy forever) but no one gave a fuck because they weren't connected to the broader metaplot.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
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- Invincible Overlord
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The problem has existed for a long time, yes, but 4E D&D was explicitly designed to be an everlasting shovelware engine where (and this is the important part) fans would gleefully make repeat orders. By not having a good or even any setting, they missed out on a huge opportunity to build a brand that would have people shelling out money for the PHB4 or even Eberron's Master Guide or whatever the fuck simply because they wanted to see what happens next.
To put things in perspective: people were complaining for the longest time throughout 4E D&D to Make Forgotten Realms Great Again. There's no such movement going from 4E D&D -> 5E D&D. Not because Forgotten Realms fixed its shit in the meantime, but because 4E so spectacularly failed to make people give a shit about any of its setting elements.
To put things in perspective: people were complaining for the longest time throughout 4E D&D to Make Forgotten Realms Great Again. There's no such movement going from 4E D&D -> 5E D&D. Not because Forgotten Realms fixed its shit in the meantime, but because 4E so spectacularly failed to make people give a shit about any of its setting elements.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Now that you mention it, 4e did try to focus on Forgotten Realms, not only advancing the timeline 94 years and changing a bunch of stuff but also making it RPGA's one and only living campaign between 2008 and 2011 (when Neverwinter Nights got added).
Then in 2012 Ed himself announced the Sundering and that novels and adventures will be released in a staggered, overlapping fashion, and the collective results of players in their adventures can be submitted to WotC, and will influence the stories in the novels. Yeah it was in preparation for 5e, but techically still 4e.
So they did try to make Forgotten Realms take center stage, they just failed miserably.
Then in 2012 Ed himself announced the Sundering and that novels and adventures will be released in a staggered, overlapping fashion, and the collective results of players in their adventures can be submitted to WotC, and will influence the stories in the novels. Yeah it was in preparation for 5e, but techically still 4e.
So they did try to make Forgotten Realms take center stage, they just failed miserably.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
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- Invincible Overlord
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Did the people who wrote for 4E D&D even play their own game?
I know the Pathfinder, 3E, and even 5E people play their own game. When you ask Jeremy Crawford about rules minutae (such as the very rare instance in which you can use Infernal Calling for a CR11 fiend, including the book it was depicted) he knows. I might think he's stupid, but I don't doubt he's invested into his own work.
But everything about 4E D&D, whether we're talking about needing Rules Compendium in ADDITION to two PHBs in order to play Essentials or encouraging 1d6+40 damage builds or the entire ritual system or (most notably) skill challenges shows a complete failure to engage with their product. Hell, even the Character Creator product shows a lack of engagement with their work, because by 2010 that thing was an unusably slow piece of shit if you're playing with all of the expansion material and have less than 8GB of RAM on your computer.
Like, the ancient Red Dragon is a pretty glaring example, but even at low level they must have had the experience of literally missing with all 3 of their daily powers, having a 1-in-2 chance of that happening with SOMEONE in a combat with a 5-person party, and realizing the math was fucked. Did no one catch how playing with a low-level party that had no leaders in it was an instant lose condition?
I know the Pathfinder, 3E, and even 5E people play their own game. When you ask Jeremy Crawford about rules minutae (such as the very rare instance in which you can use Infernal Calling for a CR11 fiend, including the book it was depicted) he knows. I might think he's stupid, but I don't doubt he's invested into his own work.
But everything about 4E D&D, whether we're talking about needing Rules Compendium in ADDITION to two PHBs in order to play Essentials or encouraging 1d6+40 damage builds or the entire ritual system or (most notably) skill challenges shows a complete failure to engage with their product. Hell, even the Character Creator product shows a lack of engagement with their work, because by 2010 that thing was an unusably slow piece of shit if you're playing with all of the expansion material and have less than 8GB of RAM on your computer.
Like, the ancient Red Dragon is a pretty glaring example, but even at low level they must have had the experience of literally missing with all 3 of their daily powers, having a 1-in-2 chance of that happening with SOMEONE in a combat with a 5-person party, and realizing the math was fucked. Did no one catch how playing with a low-level party that had no leaders in it was an instant lose condition?
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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- Serious Badass
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When I publicly took Mike Mearls to task for admitting that every time he "ran a skill challenge" he made something up on the spot and didn't bother trying to actually use the rules that were in any of the books he was charging money for - he complained that I was against innovation rather than denying it. It's very clear that they never bothered to playtest their ramblings in their in-house games. All that crap in the DMG2 got trotted out maybe once before publication, and even those playthroughs were heavily fudged.
The fact that Skill Challenges did not work at all was very obvious to anyone who mathhammered the fucking things - but the nonfunctionality was equally obvious if you just played through them ten times without fudging. Despite literally dozens of Skill Challenge overhauls, that literally never happened with the in-house play groups for any of the versions.
-Username17
The fact that Skill Challenges did not work at all was very obvious to anyone who mathhammered the fucking things - but the nonfunctionality was equally obvious if you just played through them ten times without fudging. Despite literally dozens of Skill Challenge overhauls, that literally never happened with the in-house play groups for any of the versions.
-Username17
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- Invincible Overlord
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That Mike Mearls is still with 5th Edition despite having been checked out of D&D for at least a decade shows that there's no justice in this world.
Maybe the Zak S thing will finally bring him down.
Maybe the Zak S thing will finally bring him down.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
- Whipstitch
- Prince
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I rather doubt 5e is failing so miserably that Mearls can't shift the blame to the damage done by 4e and rpgs being niche to begin with. Yes, the trickle of product they release is kinda sad, but they're obviously not spending very much and there wasn't anything about the rollout that has me thinking that Hasbro expected more than a trickle. It's a low ambition edition, both mechanically and from a marketing standpoint, and that makes it non-threatening and easy for groups to settle upon compared to creaky old 3.x or Pathfinder's fiddly bullshit.
bears fall, everyone dies
I think the real problem is that Hasbro is a toy company. Their corporate culture is set up to deal with Star Wars figurines, Nerf guns, Fortnight Monopoly, and fuck you, put tape on your face.
From the perspective of a toy company, the handling of D&D makes perfect sense: we've got a product, here's the production schedule and art budget, we gave it to some focus groups and the target audience liked it. All systems go!
From the perspective of a toy company, the handling of D&D makes perfect sense: we've got a product, here's the production schedule and art budget, we gave it to some focus groups and the target audience liked it. All systems go!
- GnomeWorks
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fucking watEightWave wrote:fuck you, put tape on your face.
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- Invincible Overlord
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So who's the worst game designer who worked on 4th Edition? I'm thinking either Andy Collins or Mike Mearls.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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- Serious Badass
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- Invincible Overlord
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As awful as that was, I don't think Joseph Batten really affected the design direction of 4E D&D. His death certainly didn't help with the forum conversions or the rollout of DDI, but if Wizards was halfway competent they could've recovered from that.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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- Invincible Overlord
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This observation makes me wonder the extent of which 5E D&D's resiliency is just through conflict aversion.FrankTrollman wrote:It's a real problem and it makes even positive changes a difficult sell for new editions. Shadowrun 4 had a substantial contingent of people who refused to adopt because Variable Target Numbers got removed, and 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons had a substantial contingent of people who refused to adopt because THAC0 went away. Because gaming groups operate by consensus, they are inherently resistant to change. And that makes a lot of change for change's sake that happened in 4th edition a terrible idea from a marketing standpoint.
When you compare 4E D&D to 5E D&D, you're struck by not how little the game innovated mechanically, but also conceptually. Except for the Tortle, there's no new races. There's no new setting. There's no new advancement paradigm -- 3E had epic levels, 4E had paragon paths/epic destinies. There's no new enemy faction. There isn't even anything in the way of new classes, unless you want to count the Mystic from Unearthed Arcana.
I think it goes beyond just laziness and ineptitude of the 5E game designers, who, for all of their faults, are modestly less incompetent than the 4E designers. They're simply scared shitless of changing, adding, or removing anything significant from the game.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Mon May 27, 2019 3:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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That's a weird statement. Because of course, Tortles are not a new race. Here's me ranting about them in 2014.Lago PARANOIA wrote: Except for the Tortle, there's no new races. There's no new setting.
-Username17
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- Invincible Overlord
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Okay, so 5E D&D literally has no new ideas to it.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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I wouldn't quite say that.Lago PARANOIA wrote:Okay, so 5E D&D literally has no new ideas to it.
That's 137 words devoted to the weird 5e idea of monsters "terraforming" areas to turn them into dungeon environments. It was unnecessary, didn't go anywhere, and was kind of dumb, but it was in fact different.Sylvan Despoilers. Though they dwell in the wilds, ettercaps have no desire to live in harmony with nature. A forest infested with ettercaps transforms into a gloomy place, choked with webs and infested with giant spiders, giant insects, and other sinister predators. Creatures that wander too far into such a wood are soon lost in a maze of webs that dangle with the bones and lost treasures of the ettercaps' victims.
Enemies of the Fey. Ettercaps are natural enemies of fey creatures. The foul creatures set web snares to catch sprites and pixies, which they hungrily devour, and will encase a dryad's tree in webbing in a vain attempt to trap the dryad. Otherwise timid fey will sometimes approach outsiders for help in dealing with an ettercap infestation, being ill-equipped to deal with the malevolent creatures themselves.
"Ettercaps create dominion like priests in Dominions 4 and those dominion candles make the area more like Murkwood from The Hobbit!" wouldn't have been my take on Ettercaps, so it's certainly an idea.
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- deaddmwalking
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In the case of Ettercaps, the rise of giant insects doesn't follow from their ability to create webs. And in the case of Legendary Monsters:Orca wrote:That sounds more like ettercaps going around laying lots of webs (& imagined consequences of that) than like their magic creating webs and darkness automatically.
That seems like an explicitly supernatural effect.SRD wrote: Regional Effects
The mere presence of a legendary creature can have strange and wondrous effects on its environment, as noted in this section. Regional effects end abruptly or dissipate over time when the legendary creature dies.
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- Invincible Overlord
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I remembered that as 4E D&D went on, the design discipline of the game collapsed enough that you started to see interesting builds arise outside of the role paradigm. For example, we had Defenders that deliberately forced people to trigger their marks and OAs for striker-level damage at the cost of 'defending'. Or leaders who didn't take their own actions and instead just duplicated/recycled actions of other party members. Or summoners who threw on enough extra chaff on the battlefield to waste attacks while still carefully controlling their own action and hp resources.jt wrote:I never noticed that the penalty damage for ignoring a mark isn't as much as a striker's damage. That's hilarious. That's awful.
I never really understood the difference between controller and defender. Like, yeah I get that one's melee and one's ranged, but is a ranged defender or melee controller really a different role? It's just various effects to prevent or redistribute damage.
That's some sad shit, how your system became more interesting as the game circled the drain and people stopped giving a fuck about adhering so strictly to Noonan's vision.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
- saithorthepyro
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From what I can tell, Noonan's vision failed because even by aping MMO's they couldn't figure out how they worked well enough to make the roles necessary ones like how actual MMO's do it.
Actually on the worst designer thing, could anyone give me a quick rundown of the main designers and how good/bad (or just shade of bad) they were since I wasn't on the internet when this entire thing went down and I am curious in case their names pop up again.
Actually on the worst designer thing, could anyone give me a quick rundown of the main designers and how good/bad (or just shade of bad) they were since I wasn't on the internet when this entire thing went down and I am curious in case their names pop up again.