I join in with the "fuck 4E" jokes quite a lot, but my actual feelings on 4E - while still negative - are more complex than "it was just bad."

I do feel that 4E is important and - while I strongly dislike it - it's a valid and important part of D&D's history. #DnD

One has to look at the environment in which 4E was made. We'd just come off of nearly a decade of 3E, which, while I maintain it was definitely better than 2E, was still a bloated fucking nightmare. It's telling that 3E had to have a 3.5E to fix all its broken shit. #DnD

4E looked at all of that and said "this is a fucking bloated catastrophe, we need to streamline all of this fucking bullshit."

That's not just admirable, it was UTTERLY FUCKING NECESSARY. 3.5E was where I came in so I have affection for it but GODDAMN it was a nightmare. #DnD

On the left is a 3.5E statblock for a major enemy.

On the right is a 4E statblock for a major enemy.

Notice how the 3.5E statblock not only requires me to reference the PHB, BUT TWO OTHER SOURCEBOOKS? See how it's TWICE AS LONG but conveys LESS INFORMATION? #DnD

If I had basic familiarity with 4E, I could competently run the encounter on the right with that Lich with literally nothing but that statblock, a piece of paper and a calculator.

I spent a decade with 3.5E and I'm still not sure I could run the encounter on the left at all #DnD

4E's "at will" abilities? BRILLIANT. Now the Wizard isn't a worthless piece of garbage with no hit points when he runs out of spell slots.

Giving non-magical classes shit to do other than "hit guy with sword" made combat feel less like "just do the one thing you're good at" #DnD

4E was a necessary response to shit being wretched, bloated and untenable by the time 3.5E finally ended.

So what did it do wrong?

Well, my beef is that it... stopped feeling like D&D. #DnD

Some things we take for granted SHOULD be challenged, sometimes even uprooted! The alignment system is a consistent source of weirdness in 3E and it was right to re-examine it.

The way they did it, though, fucking sucked. #DnD

Turning a two-dimensional grid into a flat line with "Lawful Good" at one end and "Chaotic Evil" at the other without the presence of Chaotic Good or Lawful Evil felt like an attempt to just shoehorn D&D-familiar words into a completely new system. #DnD

Sorcerer and Monk were introduced to D&D in 3E. They're not an evergreen part of the game (actually, no class except Cleric, Fighter and Wizard is) but removing them in 4E felt weird.

There were all these little pieces shaved off that I didn't know I'd miss, but I did. #DnD

It felt like they were changing stuff just to be seen to be changing stuff, just to make it very clear that this wasn't 3.5E and we had most assuredly left Kansas, which to me flies directly in the face of a carefully considered effort to streamline a game for playability. #DnD

One of the worst examples of "shake things up just to shake things up" was what they did to Forgotten Realms.

I was never super invested in Forgotten Realms, to me it was really only "the setting NWN occurs in" but the stuff 4E did to it killed what little love I had. #DnD

The interesting thing is that even Wizards of the Coast seems to agree with me on that one, since they've retconned literally all of the major changes that 4E made to Faerun out of existence completely, except for the part where you can still play Dragonborn. #DnD

Towards the end of 4E, though, it committed the cardinal sin: it broke its own rules about sourcebook bloat.

Did you know there are THREE Player's Handbooks for 4E?

Which is weird, given how 4E decided that sourcebook bloat was one of the biggest problems facing 3.5E #DnD

Yes, they were more self-contained than any 3.5E supplement and you don't NEED PHB2 or PHB3 to play, but when for years you've listed the PHB as one of the core requirements to play D&D, by releasing another book as a "PHB," you're signalling that it's required content. #DnD

Additionally, one of the last changes is... really subtle, but it's important.

Here's how it goes: 4E brought in abilities that were "Per Encounter" or "Per Day" and these were, mechanically speaking, excellent ideas.

But see how it's called "Per Encounter?" Gives it away. #DnD

A subtle problem with 4E is that it reminded us a little bit too often that we were playing a game. When you think of abilities as being "I can do this once per arbitrarily defined stretch of time allotted to combat" the illusion suddenly wears thin. #DnD

If you look at the 4E PHB entry for Wizard, it's a half page of lore about what a Wizard is, and then FOURTEEN PAGES of mechanical abilities the Wizard has.

I look at it and I see no advice on how to play a character. I see mechanical instruction on how to DPS. #DnD

D&D 5E still has "per encounter" and "per day" abilities, as my friend Rhia pointed out. We just call them "short rest" and "long rest" abilities.

But the whole point is that we have something that feels slightly less... video game-y to call them. #DnD

You look at the entry for Wizard in the 5E PHB, and it seamlessly blends lore and mechanical information, not only telling you what your Wizard can do but why they can do it. It doesn't just tell you what your Wizard can do, it tells you what it feels like to be a Wizard. #DnD

4E was a mechanically sound game, but that was the problem. It didn't pretend it was something more, and... actually, D&D needs to do that. To a limited extent, it needs to believe in its own hype. We can't be expected to do all the imagination. It has to dream, too. #DnD

Every single World of Darkness book I've ever purchased has opened with between 8 and 10 pages of story, usually relevant to the contents of the book. Each chapter opens with a one-page story of its own. They don't always deliver quality, but WoD is INVESTED in itself. #DnD

The 5E PHB quotes Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms novels. It's so proud to be part of a decades-long legacy of pulpy high fantasy. It wants you to make weird and silly characters like Dabbledob Cobblelob, the Rock Gnome glassblower who signed a dark pact with a talking sword. #DnD

The 4E PHB feels like it wants me to make a Warlock with the Star Pact.

Mechanically, they perform the same role in the party.

But they're not the same. And the game isn't the same. #DnD

5E is definitely the best version of D&D I have ever played

But you can't just ignore how vital 4E was in getting us there, and you can't pretend that 3.5E - which I have so much fondness for in theory - didn't necessitate the creation of something like 4E #DnD

And as my friend Fyn pointed out... some of the bad things about 3.5E have come back because we've been so desperate to avoid the largely fictional "taint" of 4E

Some martial-focused classes or subclasses have gone back to having nothing to do except Hit The Mans. #DnD