One of the weirder, and by "weird" I really mean "wrong," talking points out in the ttprg space is the notion that 13th Age is the successor to D&D 4e. To be clear, I am a long-time fan of 13th Age (see here), and I am someone who got back into D&D and the ttprg hobby in general with 4e back in the day. So, this is not a case of "how dare you associate [game I like] with [game I hate]!" No, the issue is that I don't think the two games are actually that much alike in terms of the core of what brings people to the respective games. If you liked 4e enough to be interested in a successor, you surely liked at least to some degree the robust, heavily tactical combat system that had movement and forced movement as a key lynch-pin. 13th Age has none of that, and in fact has a more abstract movement and positioning system than, for example, 5e. So, while it is true that Rob Heinsoo was a key designer on both games, and its is true that there are a handful of mechanics (healing surges/recoveries come to mind) from 4e in 13th Age, if you liked 4e specifically I don't think there is any particular reason to think you would like 13th Age any more than any other fantasy game.
No, the real successor to 4e is MCDM Productions' forthcoming RPG, currently known simply as "The MCDM RPG." In December, the MCDM RPG broke records by raising $4.6 million via Backerkit. The final version of the game is promised for Q2 of next year, but you can get access to the Alpha playtests via participating in MCDM Productions' Patreon program. I backed both the crowdfunding and the Patreon, and last Sunday I finished up running the first Alpha playtest packet. And having done so, it is very clear to me that MCDM RPG is trying to capture the feel of 4e, and especially the feel of the core combat loop of 4e, while improving on some of the problems that pushed people away from 4e. The game is still very much in its nascent stage, but I can report that it feels like they are well on their way toward hitting that target.
Let's talk first about the combat loop. Like 4e, MCDM RPG is predicated on the idea of using a grid and counting squares for movement. But the similarities go deeper than that, as many of the abilities that characters and monsters use in combat have "riders" that either force the opponent to move in a particular way, allow the character to move, or both. This in turn makes the battle space and using the battle space a key part of game play--in our playtest folks were thrown off roofs, against walls, down pits, etc. It's worth pointing out that the focus on forced movement and controlling movement distinguishes MCDM RPG and 4e from another popular tactical fantasy RPG, Pathfinder 2e, which is designed around the idea that all participants in the battle space will generally have free movement (by, for example, cutting way back on the prevalence of opportunity attacks).
Likewise, a key part of the game is that the abilities synergize with each other, including abilities of different PCs and different monsters. Here, I think MCDM improves on the 4e in a significant way by ditching the post-3e cyclic initiative model (where you roll initiative in the beginning and get locked into a fixed order within a turn) in favor of a system where the players and the Directors (the MCDM RPG term for the GM) can set the order of action each turn within a basic "you go, I go" format. This allows PCs and monsters to set up combos and stage actions in a way that really causes both sides to think about what they are doing. I've used similar systems in other games (Torg: Eternity and Modiphius's 2d20 games come to mind) and I simply like it better than the cyclic model--it's more fun and more engaging, for both players and GMs. And as we got more familiar with the options in the game as the playtest went on, we found fun combinations and uses for the various abilities.
There is no question that MCDM RPG is still a work in progress in many respects, but I think the core combat loop, building on what was fun about 4e, is there. So much so that I think the real question is the degree to which MCDM RPG fixes the problems with 4e, such that it can become a true successor as opposed to a copy-cat. Here, I think we can identify the four most common complaints about 4e (putting aside truly technical problems, like 4e's early wonky monster scaling and math) and see the degree to which MCDM RPG addresses them--(1) "4e didn't feel like D&D;" (2) "all the classes felt the same;" (3) "combat was too slow and too much of a slog;" and (4) "4e was too combat focused and lacked other play dimensions."
"4e Didn't Feel Like D&D." Of all the complaints, this is the most amorphous one, and for me the least salient. D&D has existed in some many discrete forms, with so many different assumed styles of play, that I think "feels like D&D" is going to necessarily mean different things to different people. Nevertheless, it was a big part of the negative discourse around 4e, and so it should be mentioned.
Here, I think MCDM RPG fixes the problem simply by not having the word "D&D" in the title. Whether fair or not (and I think not), people picked up the new 4e Players Handbook with the expectation that play will feel like all of the other times they sat down to play D&D. Because this is a new game, albeit one certainly influenced by D&D, I think players and GMs will come to MCDM RPG without that baggage, and will be better positioned to accept the game as it is.
In fact, not having "D&D" in the title allows MCDM RPG to go further to address problems with the D&D paradigm that would not be well received if the game was attempting to be in continuity with previous editions of D&D. In a recent development stream, Matt Colville mentioned that he thinks one of the sources of the "linear Fighter, quadratic Wizard" problem is that the jack-of-all-magic Wizard is too all-encompassing a concept to properly balance. The first playtest packet does not contain an arcane spellcaster, but it looks like the direction they are going to go is toward more specialized concepts (they have floated a "Summoner" and an "Elementalist" as future classes) and no generalist wizard/magic-user. Colville is probably right about the inherent and unfixable problem with the Wizard as a concept, but I think an edition of D&D that says "no wizards" is going to cause enormous wailing and gnashing of teeth among the D&D fanbase. The MCDM RPG avoids this problem by simply not being in the direct lineage of D&D, and thus does not have to cater to those concerns. [For what it's worth, this is how I interpret the line in the MCDM RPG marketing materials about being "unburdened by sacred cows from the 1970s" which got the usual suspects in the OSR community so fired up online].
"All the Classes Feel the Same." 4e placed all PC abilities into a fixed structure, where at a particular level a PC got a certain number of "At Will" abilities, a certain number of "per Encounter" abilities, and a certain number of "Daily" abilities. Because the focus was on balancing abilities across classes, the criticism was that all of the abilities were mechanically the same with different flavoring, and thus the play experience of each class is the same.
MCDM's takes this three tiered structure and replaces it with two--"Signature Abilities" that fill the same place as 4e At Will abilities, and "Heroic Abilities." Heroic Abilities are fueled by a "Heroic Resource" pool, and each class has different mechanics for gaining and spending points from the Heroic Resource pool. Critically, each class's Heroic Resource mechanics are wildly different. The Fury (the barbarian-type class) gains Rage points at the beginning of every turn, gets a lot of them, and gets passive bonuses based on the number of Rage points in the bank, incentivizing the player to "walk the line" and keep the Rage points in the bank high. The Shadow gains "Insight" through using Signature Abilities, incentivizing the player to have MMO-style rotations in combat. The Talent (the psychic/psionic class) has a negative resource that they accumulate which debuffs (and can eventually kill) the PC for using Heroic Abilities.
Thus, while each class is structured similarly, the play experience of each class is wildly different. While it definitely took a bit to get a handle on each class's mechanics, my players were very happy with their class choices, and the Talent that I was playing for a bit nearly blew her brain up with Strain, which was exactly what you want out of that class. We will have to see each of the classes and how they work, but what is there right now is really strong.
The other piece that works with this structure is the Victories system. Basically, every encounter the PCs successfully overcome (whether a combat encounter, a trap-based encounter, or a social encounter) grants 1 Victory, and these Victories persist until the PCs take a full rest (in which case the Victories are converted into XP). While in general Heroic Resources reset at the end of a combat, each Victory in the can usually results in starting with that many points in the Heroic Resource pool at the beginning of the combat. As a result, the more encounters that have been successfully overcome in a particular session, the bigger pool the PCs will have to use their more powerful Heroic Abilities. This allows for a natural power progression during a session, while simultaneously disincentivizing PCs from resting after every encounter to maximize resources.
All of this, I think, is a home run, and I predict classes and class design will be MCDM RPG's "killer app."
"Combat is Too Slow and Too Much of a Slog." The big move that MCDM makes in this space is to get rid of the attack roll. Each attack simply does a certain amount of damage. The advantage here is basically two-fold. One, and I think most importantly, on each turn each player does something meaningful--there are no "whiffs" where the attack roll fails and the PC essentially does nothing. Second, there is simply one less die roll in a round, which speeds things up.
Does this fix the problem? I think my answer here is "maybe?" The "no whiff" part is nice, especially since one of my players has truly terrible dice rolling luck. But a couple of things give me some pause. First, because everyone hits on every attack, HP are quite high even at lower levels. For example, the boss encounter at the end of the adventure had 140 HP. Damage was in the teens to low 20s on most attacks, but I am a bit concerned about HP bloat, which was a problem with 4e (and 5e). But, this is ultimately a tuning issue and an easy fix, to the extent it is an issue.
Another slow down we ran into was the boon and bane system. Along the lines of advantage and disadvantage, a boon adds 1d4 to a roll and a bane subtracts 1d4. Unlike 5e, there can be multiple boons or banes on a roll, alongside floating fixed-number modifiers. So, at times, it took a bit of time to calculate what the proper dice pool to roll on a particular attack actually was, even though the base amount was on the character sheet. This is definitely in part a system mastery issue, and also that we were not using a streamlined VTT experience. But my concern is that the gains realized from getting rid of the attack role will be lost in increasingly the complexity of the damage roll.
So, this one is a "TBD" for me. The combat loop is so much fun that my tolerance for taking on complexity is going to be pretty high, but this is definitely not going to be a rules-light game. Finding that balance is going to be key.
"The Game Is Lacking Non-Combat Dimensions." The MCDM crew has made clear that the game is going to very focused on heroic, cinematic stories with pitched battles with monsters. It will not be a proceduralist dungeon crawl, nor a hexcrawl. It also is clearly not a narrativist or "story game." So, I think this question of what this game brings to the table other than combat is an important one to both the long-term success of the game and my level of long-term interest.
This is also a TBD question, for very understandable reasons. In its current form, the MCDM RPG takes the form of a "vertical slice." It is not a full game, and it will not be a full game for some time. The ultimate answer to this question will not be clear for a year or so.
The sneak peak to MCDM's answer to this challenge is the Negotiation system. The NPC to which you were negotiating with has a numerical rating expressing their attitude toward the PCs (Interest), and a numerical rating for how long the NPC is willing to sit around and continue the negotiation (Patience). The NPC has a few things that the PCs can say that will automatically bump up the Interest level, and a few things that will automatically bump down the Patience level. For everything else, there is a skill check--succeed and you bump up Interest, fail and you bump down Patience. When the PCs get what they want, or Patience goes to zero, the Negotiation is over and the level of Interest determines the outcome.
This is somewhat similar to the, umm, controversial skill challenge mechanics from 4e. Part of the criticism of the 4e skill challenge system was that it was anti-roleplaying, in that what you might say narratively to the King was completely divorced from what game mechanical results you get via the skill check. I think this system fixes that problem, since if the players are clever at figuring out the right things to say to the NPC they basically auto-succeed, while still allowing PCs to flail around a bit and try things with the hope of moving things forward (while avoiding the "mother may I" problem of requiring the players to say whatever magic words the GM has come up with ahead of time). It needs some tweaks--as with the early versions of 4e skill challenges, I thought the DCs of the "in between" skill checks were too high--but I think the idea is very solid.
Moreover, I think this formula is replicable to other sorts of non-combat events. The playtest adventure had some really fun traps, and one of them in particular had a similar model of "this will disarm it, or you can make a skill check and see what happens." For all sorts of challenges, I like the model of "A, B, and C will automatically work, X, Y, and Z will never work and will make things worse, and everything else is a die roll." It rewards player creativity and role-playing, while also allowing PCs to "brute force" the problem through good dice rolling, avoiding plot cul-de-sacs where the players just can't figure out the puzzle.
So, my advice to the MCDM folks is to really lean into this formula and structure, and make the negotiation mechanic more generalized and more expansive.
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The bottom line here is that I went into this playtest very excited about the MCDM RPG, and left even more excited. If you haven't gotten on-board the MCDM train, I would highly encourage giving it serious consideration.
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