Richard Baker, one of the few people left at WotC who contributed substantially to the original design of 4E (everyone but him, Mearls, Wyatt, and Cordell were let go) has just issued a new column on the WotC website for "Rule of 3". Usually that's reserved for rules questions, as in the old "Ask the Sage" with Skip Williams in older times. But not this time.

This time Rich gets out the hammer and tells us that 4E rewards character skill over player skill (your character having a high stat is more important than your roleplaying), that skill challenges kill immersion, that MMOs hold valuable design lessons for pen and paper (ok, Andy Collins was the first to say that publically), and - hear hear - how most powers in 4E are completely 'samey', and they have gazillion powers in the game doing the same stuff like 2[W] damage + daze monster.

All but the last are, Rich hastens to add, deliberate design choices. And oh, he inserts the idea that Tome of Battle was not an early test drive for 4E, contravening exactly what he said 4 years ago in Wizards presents: Races and Classes.

All this leaves me scratching my head. I mean, it took me a lot of time to come round to such criticisms of 4E, and then ways to see how 4E can still deliver a completely different play experience to escape them (e.g. start to incorporate a power's flavour text more strongly into what's happening at the game table; use Mearls' old idea that skill rolls are only partial, not full, resolution mechanisms; etc etc). And now the very designer comes to tell me that, no, the original criticisms - criticisms which fanboys slammed left and right in 2008 to 2010 for "profoundly misunderstanding the game" and "failing to play the game (at all, or 'right')" - are all utterly correct.

This makes me feel all squishy inside, like a 16 year old teenage girl who just realized she's been betrayed by that cool lead guitar player in the school band who's been courting her for so long. She had finally given in to his advances, against her parents' warning, against the guy's immediate (outward) impression, heck against her own initial judgment: she came round to the view that this guy, deep down, is not what he seems to be, that he got more inside him, and so on. Cue "Time of my Life".

And then the Patrick Swayze guy comes round to her door to tell her that he's been impregnating underage girls in the dozens - and that all the bad stuff she'd been told by her parents and her girlfriends is all 100% true.

Well, what can I say. I've seen it coming. Now it's the few of us who'll have to rationalize the actual pro's and con's of an edition we like against a new wave of half baked criticisms unleashed by WotC themselves, criticisms they copy-pasted from the forums without bothering to go further. The ensuing situation creates an interesting challenge of game appreciation versus brand loyalty, and I got a couple of people at the back of my mind who I expect to flip over 4E in the near future because WotC has now officially announced the new party line. On the other hand, I'm also curious to see how much brand loyalty remains in the upcoming edition makeover, because I think WotC has squandered a lot of that away.

PS. And here's that column by Baker I mentioned in its glorious entirety:

QuoteThis week, I'll continue with more questions about the whys and wherefores of 4th Edition. We had a good response to WotC Trevor's request for questions, and I have plenty to work with still.

  With skill challenges and highly codified combat, some say 4E favors PC skill over player skill. Intentional or coincidental?
Intentional. We wanted to make sure the game was very accessible to newer players. For example, one of the classic hang-ups in roleplaying encounters is that an inexperienced player with a highly charismatic PC might not have the confidence or knack for witty repartee to portray his character's effectiveness in a tense negotiation. On the other hand, a really unpleasant PC in the hands of a forceful, fast-talking player doesn't ever get penalized for his rotten Charisma score, because the player can smooth over that character hole with his own roleplaying skills. During the development of 4e, we decided to slant the resolution of roleplaying encounters toward the PC's innate abilities, not the player's debate skills or personal panache; the skill challenge system reflects this.

There is, of course, a cost to this approach that I have come to regret to some extent: Game immersion suffers when players don't care what they say or do. I have been at many 3e and 4e tables where a player says something like, "I Diplomicize the guy," or "I bluff him, I got a 30," without ever offering a hint as to what argument or lie the character might be creating. For some gaming groups, those details are a nuisance, and using the skills is a shortcut to the action. But for other groups, those interactions are the bread and butter of exploring the world and engaging with the adventure. I'd like to find better ways to make both tables happy.

Regarding "highly codified combat," I assume you're referring to things like combat roles, unification of conditions, and leveling complexity across classes. Yes, we intentionally took steps to "insulate" newer or less skilled players from making poor decisions by not understanding what they were supposed to do. For example, it's easier to tank with a 4e fighter than with a 1e, 2e, or 3e fighter, because the 4e fighter possesses "role insulation" features such as Combat Challenge and Combat Superiority. I think there's still plenty of room for player skill to matter, however.

  Did MMOs influence design in things like encounter powers and roles, or did this come more as a natural evolution?

We're gamers too, so naturally we play a lot of games of all sorts and compare them to what we do. What MMOs did for us in the 4e development process was to provide some new vocabulary and viewpoints for examining our game. We were influenced to some degree, but we were already working on a number of internally driven design efforts that led us in some similar directions.

For example, encounter powers were something we were already experimenting with in the tail end of 3rd Edition. Design work on Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords explored this space independently of the early design work on 4th Edition. I was the lead designer on that particular project, and I wasn't much of an MMO player at the time. I was just looking for ways to create "martial spells" that could be used without reference to a daily progression but couldn't be used at will. I realized that earlier editions of D&D had many class features you could use X times per day, and when X is somewhere between 2 and 5, it's something you should see about once per encounter. Our developers were examining similar ideas derived from cooldowns in CRPGS and MMOs around the same time; the notion of the encounter power as it came to be implemented in 4th Edition arose from a mix of both ideas.

As for roles, well, roles have been part of D&D forever. Every 1e or 2e player knows that it's the job of the fighter to protect the wizard from getting attacked in melee, and it's the job of the cleric to keep the fighter on his feet. But looking at D&D through the MMO lens helped us to identify why things like the 2e specialty priest, druid, bard, and thief hadn't ever been very effective character classes when scenarios didn't cater to their special niches ("nature guy" or "talky guy" or "skill guy"). Earlier editions of D&D never really nailed down a striker role or identified what exactly was required for a "demicleric" such as the druid or specialty priest to effectively serve as a party's cleric. We'd known for years that these were problems; fresh experience with MMOs helped us to diagnose them, and started us thinking about what tools each role needed to have its unique impact in the combat part of the game.

  What's the single biggest lesson you've learned about D&D's design and development since the start of 4e, and how are you applying that info?
I chatted with some of my coworkers, and opinions vary. But here's one that I think about a lot, and my colleagues generally agree with me: We have too many powers that are too similar. Listing powers under specific classes might have helped organize the Player's Handbook for the specific task of character creation, but it launched us on a design and development path where we created many similar powers whose only substantive difference is the class those powers appear under. If I told you "I'm thinking of a 2[W] power that dazes for 1 round—which class does that power belong to?" you couldn't begin to guess. Almost anybody might have that power.

In earlier editions, some spells were allowed to appear on multiple class lists. We considered this a moderate nuisance in 3rd Edition, because it was strange that you couldn't describe hold person as a 2nd-level spell—for the wizard, it wasn't. I have belatedly come to realize that overlapping spell lists are a good thing, because they give spells like hold person and dispel magic unique identities in the game. When I play 4e, I don't recognize most of the powers that my fellow players are using, and that's a shame. In retrospect, I wish we'd just created a Powers Appendix of iconic, diverse effects (including martial powers, of course), and granted each class access to different subsets of those powers. The game would be better with a smaller number of iconic and memorable powers even if classes overlapped a bit more.

That ship's sailed, but we are looking at ways to be more conservative with the creation of new powers (or classes requiring entire power sets) in the current environment. Certainly the Essentials versions of the fighter, rogue, and ranger offered different ways to play functional characters with fewer powers. Introducing builds instead of classes is another way to create greater overlap in power selection. Upcoming products showcase more examples of both these approaches, which we now think are a little better for the game as a whole.

I'm not someone who really follows the industry, or 4e so can you break this down for me? I mean it sounds like the people who wrote the game are now coming out and saying this game isn't so cool. Am I reading that wrongly?

Quote from: Serious Paul;490964I'm not someone who really follows the industry, or 4e so can you break this down for me? I mean it sounds like the people who wrote the game are now coming out and saying this game isn't so cool. Am I reading that wrongly?

That is kind of what it sounds like to me. Or at least he is just being unusually honest about some of the unexpected outcomes of 4E design. I am no fan of 4E, was very dissapointed when it came out, but this kind of bothers me. It may just be one designer giving his honest opinion but it is hard not to read this as the WOTC line when it is posted on the website. It is a bit similar to how they trashed 3E when 4E was released. It is sort of like the Dominos adds where they say "our pizza's have sucked for years, now try some of our new pizza". It basically sets up the same kind of split you had before. Where you make a product that satisfies the critics of your latest venture and angers those who like it.

Quote from: Serious Paul;490964I'm not someone who really follows the industry, or 4e so can you break this down for me? I mean it sounds like the people who wrote the game are now coming out and saying this game isn't so cool. Am I reading that wrongly?

It's the more verbose equivalent of "I grapple the troll", but just as calculated.

Huh. I'd never seen that video before.

I still don't see him "getting" it. The big problems of 4e from the start has been one of presentation not of design. Musing about mechanics isn't going to fix a broken presentation where adventures consist of encounters rewarding rollplaying rather than roleplaying. Where mechanics are designed for their impact on the game rather than how it reflect the genre or setting.

If they want to make D&D great again. Return it to being D&D and focus on writing useful, and interesting adventures, settings, and supplements that focus all aspects of roleplaying games not just the game mechanics.  Quit trying to be like any other forms of roleplaying and focus on what make tabletop unique which is the human referee adjudicating the actions of the players in an interesting setting.

It doesn't matter how good the game mechanics are is if you fail the roleplaying. Until they fix that 5e will be just as doomed as 4e.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;490969I am no fan of 4E, was very dissapointed when it came out, but this kind of bothers me. It may just be one designer giving his honest opinion but it is hard not to read this as the WOTC line when it is posted on the website. It is a bit similar to how they trashed 3E when 4E was released. It is sort of like the Dominos adds where they say "our pizza's have sucked for years, now try some of our new pizza". It basically sets up the same kind of split you had before. Where you make a product that satisfies the critics of your latest venture and angers those who like it.

Yeah, just because it is suddenly 4e doesn't make it more palatable as a sales tactic.

Well, off to see what the Usual Suspects are up to, with a bowl of popcorn... :cool:

Quote from: Melan;490991Yeah, just because it is suddenly 4e doesn't make it more palatable as a sales tactic.

Well, off to see what the Usual Suspects are up to, with a bowl of popcorn... :cool:

Life is best if one ignores the antics of (insert game company here).

I'm a fan of Bakers Dark suns stuff for both editions, in order to keep that intact, I'm going to ignore this.

I read it and see a more overt confirmation that WotC has no clue what they are doing, or even what they want to do.

Rich seems very confused, and maybe even a bit desperate.  Actually reading everything he says, I don't see the "4e sucks now but just wait until 5e for real D&D!" marketing pitch so much as a "we're trying to please everyone and can't understand why that won't work; R&D is also checking into why water is wet".

I still think 4e was a decent game at doing what it did, but with a lot of flaws.  Running a BD&D game now, I find the system equally flawed just in a different way.

As estar says, they seem to keep missing the point and aren't taking a more holistic approach to the game design like they need to do.  Instead, they keep floundering back and forth on mechanical ideas; and all that will do is annoy everyone because you aren't going to come up with a set of mechanics that appeals equally to all groups.

this announcement is annoying. But whatever, fuck it. I like 4e and, whether it's due to the groups I've played with or to the rules themselves, i've a lot more fun playing 4e than any other edition, and that's what matters. Fuck edition wars, fuck haters, fuck industry gossip; play what you like.

Quote from: two_fishes;491002Play what you like.

Hear, hear.

Quote from: jgants;491001I read it and see a more overt confirmation that WotC has no clue what they are doing, or even what they want to do.

Rich seems very confused, and maybe even a bit desperate.  Actually reading everything he says, I don't see the "4e sucks now but just wait until 5e for real D&D!" marketing pitch so much as a "we're trying to please everyone and can't understand why that won't work; R&D is also checking into why water is wet".

I still think 4e was a decent game at doing what it did, but with a lot of flaws.  Running a BD&D game now, I find the system equally flawed just in a different way.

As estar says, they seem to keep missing the point and aren't taking a more holistic approach to the game design like they need to do.  Instead, they keep floundering back and forth on mechanical ideas; and all that will do is annoy everyone because you aren't going to come up with a set of mechanics that appeals equally to all groups.

Yeah, I didn't read it as Rich slamming his own game at all. He seems mostly happy with the changes he made to emphasis PC skill and sees the influence of MMOs as minor but positive. Even when asked directly about lessons learned he doesn't see the problem he discusses as completely unfixable.

Now of course I read the article and it just reinforced my idea that 4e is not a game for me and never will be, but that doesn't mean that WotC don't like it, I'm sure.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;490969That is kind of what it sounds like to me. Or at least he is just being unusually honest about some of the unexpected outcomes of 4E design. I am no fan of 4E, was very dissapointed when it came out, but this kind of bothers me. It may just be one designer giving his honest opinion but it is hard not to read this as the WOTC line when it is posted on the website. It is a bit similar to how they trashed 3E when 4E was released. It is sort of like the Dominos adds where they say "our pizza's have sucked for years, now try some of our new pizza". It basically sets up the same kind of split you had before. Where you make a product that satisfies the critics of your latest venture and angers those who like it.

Thats a bad example. The new Dominos is actually way better.

Interesting. He's saying stuff I've been saying for years.

The obvious inference of this is that its pre-meditated justification to try to legitimize the need for an upcoming 5e. In a way it's interesting, because last time around the tendency was to character-assassinate 3e AFTER 4e was announced, and maybe they're trying a different tactic this time to avoid backlash?

RPGPundit

3e was never "trashed".

This is an old article, by the way, well, around a month old, and I commented on it when it came out, as this is probably the signal of something. Just not what peple are making it out to be.

Anyhow, I get the feeling reading this reaction, is that a lot of guys are standing around waiting for "the big apology" to come from WOTC, and they have interpreted this as it (it ain't), and then they are saying "and it's not a big enough apology!"

Let me take you through it.

Point one (these rules favor player skill over PC skill)  is the setup. It really is a sort of admission I guess. I've been writing this in to WOTC for a while and talking about it on my blog; it's absolutely true, however, you can overcome this "tendency" with technique (something that doesn't come in a rulebook) and it is something to look out for when DMing. When you favor PC skill over player skill you get unwanted consequences. Note that this was the same for 3e as 4e- it's a description of how skills work. "I diplomacize the guy" (or situations where a character with a high score in say history or arcana will face a pit trap and say "I use history on the pit trap to escape"). Match this with the Monte Cook article that ran about a month prior. The real admission here is that if you expect the game to play itself without human intervention, well, that's what it does.

This, by the way, is also why skill challenge DCs should never have been errata'd. Because they don't matter. It was a complete red herring to change a target number to get a different roleplaying outcome.

So anyhow, this is why I find myself so perplexed when the same douche yells about roll-playing vs roleplaying and *then* says the DCs were "broken". It was always a matter of technique.

My own sad tale: I've been posting that on my blog forever, but I'm not Dave Chalker. Oh, and when they use celebrity bloggers like Dave Chalker as spokespeople? They perpetuate this stupidity. I once saw him talk about how just bumping the Skill challenge DCs "totally saved his game". What crap.

Fallout from this by the way, is something that has absolutely deadened a lot of the RPGA games- we now have these "by the book" DMs who know the rules inside and out and have absolutely zero DMing skill. The result is- 1) they never finish the games on time (within a convention slot) because they are too busy trying to follow every single letter of the rules.. and 2) they just suck at it. But they know the rules inside and out. This is the long term effects of relying on rules knowledge over technique. I don't blame 4e as much as I blame the herald test for that.

Point 2: I'm just going to tell you this and either you believe it or you don't. The MMO thing is bullshit. I keep getting the feeling that if the most popular game out when 4e came out was minecraft, people would be saying it was trying to create Minecraft on paper. Or if it were Just Dance 3, same thing.

One thing you will notice (and I mentioned this last time I spent any time around here): World of Warcraft is greatly decreased in prominence. Heck, it's free to level 20.  Anyone else notice that? It ain't the big thing anymore.

Point 3 is the big teaser: but it isn't about suddenly going back and re-releasing the 1979 editions or anything. It's saying there's too much overlap in the powers, *and* this has something to do with presentation. I didn't really get how 4e was going to work until PHB2 came out and then the character builder was released (about a year late, if you will recall..we had to create by hand up until then). The players books were just big lists of powers.. which was intimidating. If you will recall the magic item compendium at the end of 3e, it was the same format- big lists separated by level... but not a lot of hints on how to use it.

So what I think this might be a precursor to is some kind of future compendium.. a sort of "spell book" of the powers. If 5e takes a form, that might be it.

ok, here's some more info to sweeten the deal a little:


At DDXP this year they are running an "All editions" track. I'm signed up to run AD&D alongside my 4e games. (Well, they are run in a similar fashion. ) I'm proposing Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan followed by Dwellers in the Forbidden City over the course of three slots. Both of those were originally Origins tournament adventures.

They also shortened the slots (4 hours vice 5- and 30 minutes of that is paperwork time) to weed out some of the by-the-book DMs who can't seem to get their shit together enough to finish a slot on time.

There is a Special (not living realms, not any particular living campaign)  adventure this year that is going to be kind of a big deal. I can't say more.