While every version of every roleplaying game has its detractors, it’s hard to avoid the perception that in the case of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the detractors have effectively won. Fifth Edition may make a few nods to its immediate predecessor here and there but is clearly built along retro lines, and what laughably passes for the gaming press has by and large embraced the narrative that Fourth Edition was a horrible failure and a betrayal of the “real” D&D, which was thankfully kept alive by the traditionalists at Paizo. But this narrative leaves out an entire swathe of gamers, both those who liked Fourth Edition well enough and those who actually preferred it to earlier editions (and to what Wizards is offering now). For people like me, it’s about time our side of the narrative was aired.
When Fourth Edition was being released I was not immediately on board. I had finished a reasonably long 3.5 game, enjoyed it well enough, and was generally in the mood for other genres and other systems and never keeping track of Armor Check penalties again. But what I saw I liked, and when I did take the plunge I found a game that felt fresh and streamlined, still crunchy but not obsessed with detail, and which gave many classes options I hadn’t considered before. The more I dug into it the more I grew to appreciate its bold tweaking of the familiar to get at what the essence of D&D was; heroic fantasy adventure in dark and dangerous places full of horrible monsters and piles of gold coins.
Which is why it’s been so damned disheartening to see the game and its ideas cast aside so thoughtlessly. It’s not a perfect game; it’s much more complex than it needs to be, combats take too long, and there are too many damned feats. But instead of being lambasted for its actual flaws, the game was called on the carpet for changing too many of the surface features of D&D- pure “Vancian” casting, the Great Wheel, Gnomes in the core Player’s Handbook, etc. The design of D&D’s Fifth Edition quickly became about resurrecting these sacred cows, asserting with a near-religious fervor that without all these familiar surface details the game could only be an impostor.
But something more vital is being lost here. What made 4e work as well as it did was that it was largely built from the ground up, with a commitment to balance. All the classes were roughly equal, all capable of unique contributions in and out of combat, and with this balance came freedom. There was no longer a Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard problem, no CoDzilla or caster supremacy of any sort. A commitment to tight math on both sides of the DM screen made encounter-building substantially easier and made the rules as a whole much more transparent.
And for some reason this is what is slipping from us. Of the major heroic fantasy games on the market now, none has 4e’s commitment to tight design. 13th Age makes many concessions to tradition, Pathfinder can’t drift too far from 3.5 for fear of losing its fan-base, and D&D Next has explicitly been put together through “feel”, throwing together familiar elements first and figuring out how they’re supposed to work together after. Game designers don’t seem to talk much about balance anymore, nor is anyone rushing to replace 4e’s rich tactical options. Because elements of the fan-base disliked how 4e balanced classes and options, balance itself became the enemy. Or, at least, something not to put too much effort into.
I know I can’t be the only one who likes being able to pick out options that fit a character concept without worrying about accidentally building an incompetent PC. I can’t be the only one who likes the security of building an encounter knowing that if there’s a TPK, it’ll be because I was actually trying for it and not because I forgot to note a creature’s DR 10/cold iron. I can’t be the only one who likes to have a system that just works.
And that’s why I come to praise 4e rather than bury it. Because the hobby needs good design; it needs to value balance and the freedom it brings. Designers ought to be encouraged to think hard about the numbers they give to things, rather than going with what seems like a good idea at the time. It’s true that a great GM can make any system sing, but we’re not all great GMs, and GM skills are learned, not inborn.
Mostly, though, I praise 4e because it’s a damn good game. Great works have often been misunderstood or rejected, and we should celebrate them rather than bow to the will of the masses. If the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons is a failure, it’s one worth classing with D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics, and Arrested Development. Sometimes the losing side isn’t the worst place to be.