Why did 4e have to die? A thread: D&D is managed as if everyone playing it is going to realize the game sucks and stops playing. One misstep, and it's done. Weirdly, this means that when the business runs into trouble you always have to bet the house on a Hail Mary. - ThreadSky

mearls.bsky.social • 74 days ago

Why did 4e have to die? A thread:

D&D is managed as if everyone playing it is going to realize the game sucks and stops playing. One misstep, and it's done.

Weirdly, this means that when the business runs into trouble you always have to bet the house on a Hail Mary.

Comments

emeraldzeea.bsky.social•74 days ago

4e would have worked better if it had dropped ability scores, piddly modifiers, damage rolls, and other slow rolling and adding and subtracting. Those worked in Basic, not so well in something where every fight takes a zillion turns. Making the numbers smaller helps too.

emeraldzeea.bsky.social•74 days ago

I once ran a variant where I averaged hit points and damage for all combatants, divided by 5, used my best judgement on rounding and edge cases, etc.

Ran more than twice as fast without any other changes.

Would have been easier to use monster stat blocks without them having unnecessary stats, too.

emeraldzeea.bsky.social•74 days ago

Speaking of that, monsters generally didn't have ability scores until 3e and I have no idea why they were retained when 4e and 5e abandoned the "make monsters as though they're part of a carefully designed physics engine also used by the players" experiment.

Like, they add nothing to the game.

emeraldzeea.bsky.social•74 days ago

It's not like the overly complex stat blocks of 5e do much. You decided how tough they should be and messed with spreadsheets to determine HD, for example.

There's no objective reality or lore determining those stats and they actively harm game balance. Why did you keep them?

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

We really didn't have a good handle on how much the audience wanted them, and we simply didn't have time to make real design strides with monsters. There is an argument that going from player to DMing is easier if monsters look like PCs, but I think the downsides are too huge.

emeraldzeea.bsky.social•73 days ago

That makes a lot of sense. I agree that the downsides are too big, but it's nice to know the logic behind it.

katrinathelamia.bsky.social•74 days ago

I mean, if people actually stopped playing "when realising it sucks"--every other ttRPG system would actually have a decently proper sized player base (well, comparatively)

D&D could be, literally, the worst system out there (making Spawn Fashan look awesome) and people still won't switch

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

The tragedy is that when people realize that D&D is not for them, they seem to often throw the baby out with the bath water and stop TTRPGs in general.

thejefty.bsky.social•73 days ago

It's an interesting thought, but I'm not sure how it would have played out in practice.
It's not like they just had a cool idea for a new game and decided to put it out as a new D&D edition. 3.5 was struggling under its own weight. That was the impetus.

thejefty.bsky.social•73 days ago

So, put out this new tactical 4e and keep publishing more 3.5 material?

Was there really the market space for both? Could they have kept 3.5 afloat indefinitely?

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

That's what I would do. In terms of market space, ideally you would build 4e in this world so that it attracted only the 3.5 players and DMs who had already stopped buying. There was a chunk of that audience that 4e was perfect for.

I think there was and is market space for both.

twonkybot.bsky.social•72 days ago

When I played it I felt I was playing a world of warcraft dungeon instance. It wasn't what I was looking for in a D&D game

rengaulmiir.bsky.social•73 days ago

I suppose a decent example is the D&D board games, Wrath of Ashardalon, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, etc. They are very 4E based and hold up well when looking for a different experience from traditional TTRPG.

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

Exactly, and if we had started with something like that and built from there WotC is probably still publishing 4e.

newbiedm.bsky.social•71 days ago

Call it DnD Tactics and market it as such and it would have thrived

rengaulmiir.bsky.social•71 days ago

I don't know sales details, but the value is there. I own 4 of the 7(?) sets myself. They are self-contained games but also "combine" for more dungeon hijinks. If you're a TTRPG player, they include a bunch of minis, about 40+ per set! They sold me on the minis alone, but the game it great itself.

rengaulmiir.bsky.social•71 days ago

is*

jesawyer.bsky.social•74 days ago

There were a lot of stylistic things about 4E I didn’t dig and I didn’t like how the races/classes were split across books but the game itself? Lots of fun.

villainousvibes.bsky.social•74 days ago

Which is unfortunate because there are so many cool things with people realizing they can dip their toes elsewhere. 4e truly was the era to have people find their own way.

pata-hikari.bsky.social•52 days ago

Because you wanted to impress your rapist friends you freak.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

For 50 years, the company making D&D has failed to publish any meaningful new variants of the game. They've tried different genres or other games, but no one has taken D&D and sliced it into different ways to play.

katrinathelamia.bsky.social•74 days ago

Well, to be fair, in their offense, for about thirty years of the life of D&D, the company's primary goal was maintaining the rights to the Buck Rogers movies. With ttRPG stuff being secondary to owning everything Buck Rogers related

The ttRPG is a side effect of the primary goal: Buck Rogers

skerrit7h3green.bsky.social•74 days ago

I think this is what attracted me to Ravenloft in older editions, and a lesser extent Birthright and Planescape. Not only were they different genres, but had different rules and way to play (particularly Ravenloft or Masque of the Red Death).

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

I was very skeptical of Eberron when it was first announced, but stuff like warforged, the new magic items and monsters, and action points made the game feel so dynamic and fun. It was like a mini-reboot that got me back into 3.5.

skerrit7h3green.bsky.social•72 days ago

I’m definitely a fan of worlds having special rules that reinforce flavor and only apply in that setting.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

There is always a fear that "official" D&D needs to be tightly controlled an regulated. Adding variants will just make people mad and undermine what "official" means. IMNSHO, "official rules" runs counter to the entire point of TTRPGs as a folk hobby.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

Compare that to Magic: the Gathering, which has sealed, draft, league, vintage, explorer, legacy, two-headed giant, commander, and a lot more. I count 26 formats at the WotC site.

Jumpstart lets me get in a quick game. Commander is multiplayer (causal or competitive). Etc.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

Warhammer offers fantasy and science fiction, battles that range from skirmishes to massive throw downs (500 - 5,000 points) or small firefights (Kill Team), 40k or 30k for dark SF, Old World or Age of Sigmar for fantasy, Underworlds for a TCG-like minis game, etc.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

Some of those very popular formats and products started out as community-created variants.

mearls.bsky.social•74 days ago

D&D is 1,000 pages of rules. Just add a world, 4 to 6 players, and 4 hours a week for maybe 8 to 24 months? And that's it. The game today strives to be the same thing it was 50 years ago.

rooneg.bsky.social•73 days ago

How much of it is “going to realize the game sucks and stop playing” and how much is “going to realize they don’t ever need to buy more of this game because the core books are enough to provide a lifetime of entertainment” instead? That always felt like the real threat for an RPG publisher.

grimmbart.bsky.social•74 days ago

Really interesting that you say that. Ever since 4E sparked the ire of grognards (like myself), I've said that it wasn't a bad game per se, it just isn't what we want as D&D. And if they'd marketed the game as "Wizards' Tactical Fantasy" instead it would be doing fine. It was WTF alright.

katrinathelamia.bsky.social•74 days ago

I mean, if they called it "Return to Chainmail", there is an excellent chance it would have been the most celebrated release ever

So yeah--you are completely correct

monadicherder.bsky.social•74 days ago

How much of that management mindset comes from a desire to avoid making players think about what TTRPG system (D&D or non-D&D) they want to play?

mearls.bsky.social•73 days ago

Wow, that's a great question! I don't think it was a conscious element, but I do wonder that subconsciously the keepers of D&D know that a huge chunk of their audience thinks D&D is *the* TTRPG. Adding choice might make them wander.

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