Will 4th edition ever make a comeback?

What MORE support do you want? Asking politely, because there is a fine line between support and bloat. We can't forget that the hard limit on # of AEDU powers come to avoid option paralysis.

Same guy talking about a successor game above. We're aiming for having a class per role per power source, since those unfilled gaps are interesting in terms of both design space and expanding the breadth of concepts that can be easily supported.

If I could snap my fingers and have a 4th rewrite I'd do a tristat, tri-defense class based system without level-ups, pared-down skill list to about 6 (2 per stat), where you draft a power pool from certain available powers, then have it be more arena combat, a hybrid RPG/deckbuilder/living-cardgame. Advancing would be swapping out Basic power cards for upgraded versions.

I really really fucking love Card Hunter so I'd basically just rip off that and merge in the 4e rpg stuff

funin.space

Go there, have fun everyone.

> 6e, 7e
We know they will happen and if I could have it my way 6e would take 5e as a starting point and simply expand upon the idea of a D&D game that borrows from all previous editions. In 5e Feats are optional but what if in 6e WotC found a way to make Powers an option too?

>Card Hunter
Shit, that game is awesome. I would play the heck out a 4e/CH mash-up.

Anyone want to share some stories?

Why the fuck do people go on about "support?" OSR gamers manage with games that are little more than the streamlined B/X sets.

Because different games with different mechanical depths benefit to different degrees from having more content available.

I'm more interested in Gamma world. The cards were a shit idea but the character creation in the latest edition was cool and the fast and loose feel made it probably the most fun my group had in the D&D 4e era.

I never played 7th edition Gamma World, but I'm a big fan of the setting. I generally think that Gamma World should take its own route and not hew too closely to D&D though. I don't know enough about 7th edition to critique it, though the zany pick-up game it's portrayed as is not something that particularly interests me.

Mechanically it's streamlined 4e with characters made of two race/classes.

Really I think the way it handles classes could be great in a fantasy game where you could feasibly do racial classes in a neat way.

>wanting to play 4e
Why would you even want to play one of the dullest tabletop role-playing games in the history of tabletop roleplaying games? Seriously, each class you play in this game to fight assorted villains, is indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the shitty art, the classes’ only consistency is their complete lack of interesting mechanics and ineffective use of the powers system, all to make spellcasters mundane, and to make martials into spellcasters.

Perhaps the die was cast when Merals decided to make all the classes fit the spellcaster framework; he made sure the game would never be taken seriously as anything but narrative metagaming, just a ridiculously dogmatic departure from earlier editions in an attempt to cement his place in the history RPG design. 4th edition might be anti-Pathfinder (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-D&D in its refusal of the mechanics that made the game attractive despite its inherent flaws. No one wants to face that fact. Now, with Fifth Edition,they no longer have to.

>a-at least the powers were good, though!
No! The powers are dreadful and boring. As I read the core rulebook, I noticed that every class had some daily power for 2[W] damage and half damage on a miss. I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that power showed up again, with a cool-sounding name in a vain attempt to differentiate it. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Mearls' mind is so governed by the few creative ideas he has, that he has no other recourse for creating class abilities. Later I read a lavish, loving review of 4th edition by the creator of DOTA 2. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are playing D&D 4e at 15 or 16 years of age, then when they get older they will go on to play DOTA 2." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you play D&D 4e you are, in fact, being trained to play DOTA 2.

nice pasta, where's the source?

Maybe if something comes along and strikes up enough interest to kick off some popularity it, but it's not very likely.

There have been a few systems that build off of many of its central mechanics (Strike!, Valor) but they've got they're own problems and could both have done with another year of development to nail presentation and clarity.

>You mean will it be republished?
>continued support
Do you guys count digital publishing? Virtually all of the 4e line is up on Drive Thru RPG.

I recommend stealing Valor's "Meter" system. It's a much more clear way of expressing the sense of dramatic progression and momentum that Skill Challenges are supposed to entail, but without any of its vagueness or presentation issues.

It's a copypasta about Harry Potter and being trained to read Stephen King.

Anyone playing a 4e game right now?

>Really I think the way it handles classes could be great in a fantasy game where you could feasibly do racial classes in a neat way.

That's my favorite thing about classes in Gamma World 7e. Two randomized character types. I once rolled a guy that was...fuck, I can't remember the official names. I think it was the ooze type and the wheeled type, so I decided he was a big ball of Silly Putty.

I wish I was playing anything, I'm stuck out here in no man's land.

The answer is both "no" and "it already has"

>On the one hand
it is astronomically unlikely that new material will ever be printed "officially" for 4e. In this sense, it will never make a comeback
>On the other hand
Funin.Space still exists.

The offline builder still exists.

All the book PDF's still exist.

If anything, the game stopped printing books when the power-creep and material bloat started to show, so what is out there is great.

The same play community that played 4e when it was "official." The 5e community is largely composed of the people who left D&D for PF when 4th was released and people who weren't yet playing when 4th was "official," and as such it didn't really take anybody from the 4th community. All the people who played and loved 4th are still playing and loving 4th. It's just that the 3e community, which became the PF community, which became the 5e community, was always larger; however, the lack of "officiality" in no way prevents anyone who loved 4e to keep playing 4e. I still enjoy running two campaigns: one online and one IRL, and none of us see any particular reason to "convert" to 5e.

If anything the community is stronger because there isn't an "official" community trying to convince people to play without the math fixes, because the devs were too embarrassed to admit that they indeed made some mistakes with the release-math.

In this sense, the "comeback," in-terms of actual people playing the game, happened long ago, in the sense that there never really was a break in the community, save for just long enough to experiment with 5e a bit.

Try running a game of 4e with the people you already played 4e with: people will come and play, and it's very much a DM's dream edition so even if you're not an experienced DM, it'll be a great place to start.

I think it is great. You can have human + elf as choice to play a half elf (with no "class"), or a human + fighter or elf + rogue.

Or fighter + rogue (with no "race").

I think the idea is that you are "human" if you have no racial class, but thinking about it, yeah, that'd leave us with the option of a "dwarfelf" but not a half-elf.

The "human" option is akin to the Paragon (in 3,x terms) Human.

Since, off course, a Rogue/Cleric can be of any race, but doesn't have access to the racial benefits/feats/powers (they don't represent the Paragon aspect of his race).

I'm in two, running another

...

Power sources are meaningless, though. There are just four classes that trick you into thinking they're different by having different cosmetic power sources attached.

No? That's not true at all?

Have you actually read 4e?

This. Lots of people skipped 4th, including me, because it wasn't what we were looking for. You can't put an "official" stamp on something or give it "support" and attract players if it's not what they want. 4th is for a very specific kind of player and no one else, as shown by the completely uniform complexity and rigid campaign structure hardwired into the rules. The people it appealed to still have it, and the people who don't will never be tricked into playing it.

I can think of, like, two monsters and no powers that actually care about what your power source is. It means nothing. Your role means everything. The differences between different power sources' versions of the same role are some minor rules tweaks and pure refluffing.

>The differences between different power sources' versions of the same role are some minor rules tweaks and pure refluffing.

But this is a lie. This is just a blatant falsehood directly contradicted if you actually read the classes.

As for power sources not mattering, the power source informs the design of the classes under it. There are mechanical themes and trends running through different classes of the same source, along with it being a prerequisite for pretty important things like Paragon Paths or Epic Destinies.

>fluff is totally important
Uh huh.

No? There are real, distinct mechanical differences that objectively, provably exist. I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say at this point.

Fluff is just fluff. It is as important as you make it.

But power sources aren't "just" fluff. They have both mechanical effects (feats, PPs, EDs, items reference them), and they have unifying themes and mechanical leanings.

Regardless of primary role:
Martial classes tend to be the ones that deal the most damage
Arcane classes tend to have AoE and controlling effects
Divine classes have the most support abilities
Primal classes are the tankiest.
Psionic classes break the mold
Shadow classes suck ass, Mearls is a hack

It's not about "tricking people into it" it's about having exposure. I have an okay success rate introducing 4e/Strike! to people (basically perfect aside from that one group of 3.x guys I used to play with), but it'd be a lot easier to get an irl group going if it was more popular, and not "oh that D&D I heard was an MMO or something".

It isn't super popular as far as editions go. I suppose it's possible for a retro-clone to pop up, but it's license is pretty strict compared to 3.X and doesn't really allow for a Pathfinder-esque follow-up. Too many obstacles methinks.

There are more than just what you wrote. IIRC, Martial is the only source that have Reliable, Divine is the only with the Channel Divinity power (no other source have something similar) and so on.

But yeah, the Wizard is the "controllest" of the controllers, for example.

It had all the exposure an RPG could have ever hoped to have. It was the most "official," mainstream, well-supported, heavily-marketed RPG for a good five years with all the might of Hasbro behind it, and still it couldn't become more than a niche game because it's designed to be a niche game. It's for you, and that's fine. Don't fool yourself into thinking it's for everyone.

Historical revisionism at its finest.

The most advertising it got was at launch, when the game was at its worst, and a good deal of that advertising was fucking awful and did more to drive people away than attract them to it.

When it was supported and marketed it was the lead game. When it isn't, it isn't.

Funny that.

Besides, note that we aren't even just talking about 4e itself coming back (which is unlikely as fuck), but a more 4e-like D&D as well down the line.

Yes, that thing you said is indeed historical revisionism at its finest. You can't pretend that the 500-pound gorilla of tabletop games never got enough exposure.

Claiming that 4e had a fair go because it was well advertised is horseshit. Between the tragic murder suicide which killed its online functionality, an extreme fanbase reaction it never properly responded to, mismanagement and impossible expectations from further up the ladder and the death blow of Essentials, it's honestly astonishing it did as well as it did.

You can't have an extreme fanbase reaction if you don't have exposure. I can't believe I have to explain that you have to be aware of something before you can react to it.

The vaporware was not a marketing problem. If your whole software project rests upon one guy, to the point that you can't replace him even years after the fact, then your software project would have been shit anyway. People reacted to what was actually produced.

Sure Hasbro had high expectations, but 4e wasn't like one of those Hollywood movies where the accountants claim it lost money even if it was popular. It's more like a straight flop with a small cult following.

You're blaming everything for the game's shortcomings except the game itself, and pretty transparently so. 4e had every advantage that a tabletop game could have, and it blew it.

Now you're showing you don't know shit. 4e made good money, it was a very successful RPG. The problem is that internally, Hasbro was banking it on being an MtG tier money maker, which was frankly impossible.

Nah.

Just stepping back from the OGL alone put it at a huge disadvantage, and has nothing to do with the system itself. It also came shortly after 3.5, unlike 3rd, which had entered a lot more starved market. It also didn't actually get any good games like 3rd did. No third party support either (because of the OGL thing mostly, but because of other stuff as well). Then they stopped selling PDFs because OH NO, PIRATES!.

Really it's a clusterfuck all over.

Guy you are replying to also noted that the game on release was at its worst; pretty sure that is admitting there was something wrong with the game at least.

It's not for everyone but it definitely got it really bad. It's basically New Coke vol 2.

I was trying to carefully word my statement in a way that wouldn't lead to retarded skubfests, but it seems you were less considerate.

I could have said "While the 'we only want 3rd edition forever, and will never change' crowd is bigger than that 4th community, it's not like the 4th community, who largely hate 3rd edition, are suddenly going to go back to it because Wizards changed the number from 3 to 5 without meaningfully changing the mechanics." Seriously, if someone doesn't like 3rd, then there's nothing to like about 5th. They're practically indistinguishable unless you played so much of the former that meaningless minutia seems important.
>4th is for a very specific kind of player and no one else
Less numerous does not necessarily mean less varied. 3rd's OGL marketing scheme was very successful in training a new generation to be a very specific kind of player, and now they moved to 3.501 (aka 5th.) That's not variety, that's magnitude.
> rigid campaign structure hardwired into the rules.
What the fuck are you talking about? Having interesting gameist combat and freeform noncombat is a uniform structure? I'm genuinely not sure what you mean by this, because the games I've both played and run with 4e have been varied in structure and genre.... we just never used any printed modules, because printed modules are garbage regardless of edition
>be tricked into playing it.
Nigga, I don't trick people into playing my games. Sometimes I'll show them how fun 4e is when it's refluffed to something else, so their "reeee it doesn't feel like D&D" doesn't trigger, but "tricked" is a very strong word.

Yeah, the 3e community (which is now the 5e community) is still larger than the 4th community, but that really doesn't mean nearly as much as you seem to be implying it means. It means that Wizards had a very successful marketing gambit in the form of the OGL that trained the kids who started playing during the early 00's to think of gaming a certain way,

>an extreme fanbase reaction it never properly responded to
There was never going to be any "proper" response to that particular reaction, because that reaction was "We want more OGL games, more 3.5, and nothing else will do." Hell, that's still largely what the fanbase wanted, and now that's what Wizards gave them, in the form of 5e.
>You're blaming everything for the game's shortcomings except the game itself
4e wasn't perfect, but the fans were never going to accept anything that branched out further from the OGLd20 format further than SwSagaEdition did, and even then, a solid HALF of the OGLd20 kids complained that it was too significant a deviation from the formula they'd been playing for nearly a decade.

The contingent of players who started playing during the early 00's, which will likely continue to be the largest segment of the market because that's when the internet became normalized, will continue to want nothing but 3rd edition OGL clones repackaged, and nothing is going to change that. That doesn't mean that every game that doesn't feel like an OGLd20 clone has system problems.

This is similar to a concept that I've been sitting on for a bit:
You pick a a Role, a Power Source, and a Background--which in sci-fi or fantasy might be race. Your Role and Power Source each have Novice, Utility, and Expert powers, mimicking the Origins of Gamma World as well as its sort of advancement (which means that overall advancement isn't half as sprawling as in 4e proper).
They also give training to one skill and a bonus to one defense, as well as a +1 to relevant ability scores.
Backgrounds function similarly to Races in 4e: +2 to one ability, small bonus to two skills, perhaps modifying speed or granting a new movement type, conditional modifiers and trappings.

The three also each grant your character "tags," that have their own value, like a magnitude. Tags represent how invested you are in a niche and satisfy feat prerequisites, as well as sometimes acting as scaling modifiers.
But here's the big thing (and the biggest pain in the ass to design, even in a system that's ultimately much more restrained than 4e): the Feat system is like Fantasy Craft's. Each Feat goes a lot farther to set your character apart, many also granting you a new stance or power, plus adding 1 to a relevant tag as you grow to embody that more.

>Having interesting gameist combat and freeform noncombat is a uniform structure?
Maybe you really don't see how there are fewer possible campaigns in 4e than in anything before or since. Not only is every 4e character at about the same level of rules complexity, but 4e has the narrowest range of monsters, of acceptable gear to have, and of variations to the structure of an adventuring day. When 4e tried to do Dark Sun it had to introduce a whole new set of houserules to give everyone the effects of magic items without actually having them because the game literally collapses if you don't have a weapon with the right amount of plus. 3.5 had some degree of built-in expectation that you'd find +1 weapons at a certain point, but old-school AD&D and 5e had nothing like that. This is what I mean when I say that 4e is for a very specific kind of player.

> Sometimes I'll show them how fun 4e is when it's refluffed to something else
I was thinking that you guys just wanted a wave of hype to trick people into playing 4e again, but holy shit, I never would have thought that someone would go that far to literally deceive people into playing something.

>When 4e tried to do Dark Sun it had to introduce a whole new set of houserules

It's... not really a houserule if it's official, is it?

>3.5 had some degree of built-in expectation that you'd find +1 weapons at a certain point

It literally has a WBL (wealth by level) table.

It does, in fact, break if you don't use it but try to use level appropriate encounters (I mean, it breaks anyway, but whatever).

Also the idea of somebody actually going

>So, how are you enjoying the mech campaign?
>It's great! Best combat I ever played.
>Yeah, 4e is pretty good at that
>WHAT 4E? YOU BETRAYED ME!

is hilarious

Do treasure tables not ring a bell to you? There are things in AD&D that are straight up immune to you if you don't have a high enough bonus on your weapon.

Worth noting that AD&D ALSO did this. Darksun characters compensate for not having magic items by starting higher level and being all psychic (4e also gives out Darksun themes which are psychic stuff).

>Not only is every 4e character at about the same level of rules complexity
In what way does that limit campaign possibilities?
>but 4e has the narrowest range of monsters
And the widest range of monster-fluff, because you could easilly re-skin monsters to be what you needed, and the monster creation was so easy it could be put on a business card (and was)
>of acceptable gear to have
Inherent bonuses
>and of variations to the structure of an adventuring day
this is a broad claim for which you have brought no evidence
>3.5 had some degree of built-in expectation that you'd find +1 weapons at a certain point, but old-school AD&D and 5e had nothing like that
Correction, 5e has nothing like that, and only 5e. While they weren't in the PHB, AD&D actually had very clear guidelines for magic items in the DMG and rather comprehensive loot tables.
>This is what I mean when I say that 4e is for a very specific kind of player.
No more than 3e is (no matter how many times they rename and repackage it.) The playstyle of deckbuilding-like character-creation, followed by proof-of concept table execution isn't necessarily bad, but it's also for a very specific type of player, it's just that the early 00's specifically grew a generation of players to want that specific playstyle.
>never would have thought that someone would go that far to literally deceive people into playing something.
Well, first you DID claim that people literally wanted to "trick" people into playing. Furthermore, in what way is "allright guys, so I'm going to show you how much fun 4e can be, and to prevent all the hangups people may have about 'what feels like D&D' we're not going to be running it in a fantasy setting: we're going to be playing a Barsoom/AnimeMecha/Laser-Sword-Space-Opera/etc... game,'" deception? Much like the 4e core books, I don't obfuscate the goals of my decisions.