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.
Evan Waters
Evan Waters lives in Kansas City, where he works at a nonprofit bookstore. In 2005 he co-wrote the Star Warriors supplement for Spectrum Game Studios' Cartoon Action Hour, and has since worked with the National Audio Theater Festivals doing voices and sound effects for live performances. He has written several reviews for RPG.net and maintains a blog, Club Parnassus wherein he writes about various kinds of media, games included.
What a stupendous article. I read the entire thing, nodding like a drinking bird, thinking, “Somebody else gets this!” My favorite part about 4E was that it let us players be heroic. In other games and in other editions, you were only going to survive if you were excessively careful (10′ pole anyone?), a pathetic coward (Run away! Run away!), or a backstabbing jerk (I’ll stab my unconscious friends and steal their stuff).
Yes, I am enjoying what I’ve seen so far with 5E, but that doesn’t invalidate all of the hours and hours and hours of spectacular fun I had with 4E. As fans and participants, we may find it easy to live in a binary world–this GOOD, that BAD–but it’s also lazy. I can love one AND love the other. The versions of D&D are very much like my children. All of them are my favorites.
Thumbs up. 4E is an excellent game. It’s not for everyone, but it does what it set out to do impressively well (I would argue that it actually accomplishes its goals better than, say, Pathfinder, unless you believe Pathfinder’s “design goal” is “look as much like D&D 3.5 as possible”).
It is a shame that people are unable to distinguish “I don’t like this game” from “this is a bad game.”
For me, 4e was the the game that I had the most fun/ease in running.
As a player, I enjoyed it up to about level 10. I think level 8 was our sweet spot.
“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.”
I think this sentence captures one of my biggest complaints with 5e perfectly. Although I think the game is okay (not great, just okay), I feel like certain elements within the game were included so it would “feel” like D&D (not because they were the best mechanic for the job).
While I wasn’t the biggest fan of 4e (it just wasn’t the game for me), it really doesn’t deserve the black sheep status the fandom has given it. It was well-designed, pretty balanced, and had some pretty neat rules (1/2 level bonus, rituals, etc.)
4th Edition was unlikely to ever be as successful as its predecessors in the marketplace precisely because it was an almost clean break with its history; it wasn’t D&D, it was WoW mechanics in a D&D wrapper.
Whether it is actually a “better” RPG is sadly irrelevant because, as proven by the rise of Pathfinder, the majority of the market wasn’t looking for a “better” RPG, they were looking for D&D. They didn’t want a revolution, they wanted an evolution. And when Wizards didn’t deliver, they went to Paizo, who did.
The only way 4th Edition would have been a success is if a whole new audience, one that had never played TTRPGs or D&D would have purchased the game. That, however, was not, and is not, the reality of the marketplace.
So while 4th Edition may be a superior game, it was a huge miscalculation of the customer base by WOTC.
“it wasn’t D&D, it was WoW mechanics in a D&D wrapper.”
Well, no, and that’s the kind of misinformation fans have had to deal with. It’s still a d20 game, still has AC and attack rolls and skill bonuses and feats (for some reason)- it has a lot more in common with 3e than with WoW. (For one thing, WoW combat is only tactical in the major boss fights where you have to stand out of the way of various area attacks- most of the time it’s staying in place and hitting your attacks, rather than pushing/pulling enemies around.)
And I think there’s a more fundamental issue- is not all this rush to claim what’s really D&D and what isn’t defining the game too narrowly? To me, D&D is a game of fantasy adventure where adventurers with various abilities go into dungeons full of monsters to steal treasure. That’s the subgenre it has come to define. When you start defining it by whether Wish spells are in the game or not, that’s a recipe for stagnation.
Thanks for replying, Evan.
The D&D/WoW comparison was intended as a “feeling” rather than a deep mechanical/qualitative analysis, because that was my initial impression upon looking over the material. And, as sluggish sales and its displacement at the top by Pathfinder showed, I was clearly not alone in feeling this was not D&D.
Compared to previous edition changes, 4th was the most significant break with everything that had gone before. Unfortunately for 4th, many people were put off by this, for lack of a better term, foreignness and chose not to invest the time and mental effort into making that switch. And, yes, those choices were likely based on initial impressions/feelings rather than an extensive exploration of the new edition. And while that may not be “fair” to 4th, it is a reality that WOTC failed to account for and appears to now be trying to correct with 5th Edition.