ToB wasn't insiration for 4E, it was the other way around!

[RobbyPants]

From the Den:

A bit of backstory, this is how the designers of 4th edition described the process:

Design Work, Orcus I:June through September 2005
Team: James Wyatt, Andy Collins, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission: Our instructions were to push the mechanicsdown interesting avenues, not to stick too close to the safehome base of D&D v.3.5. As an R&D department, we under-stood 3.5; our mission was to experiment with something new.
Outcome: We delivered a document that included eightclasses we thought might appear in the first Player’s Handbook or other early supplements, powers for all the classes, monsters,and rules.

First Development Team:October 2005 through February 2006
Team: Robert Gutschera (lead), Mike Donais, Rich Baker,Mike Mearls, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission: Determine whether the Orcus I design (as wenamed it) was headed in the right direction. Make recommen-dations for the next step.
Outcome:The first development team tore everythingdown and then rebuilt it. In the end, it recommended that wecontinue in the new direction Orcus I had established.This recommendation accompanied a rather difficult stuntaccomplished in the middle of the development process: Baker,Donais, and Mearls translated current versions of the Orcus Imechanics into a last-minute revision of Tome of Battle: Book of  Nine Swords. It was a natural fit, since Rich Baker had already been treating the Book of Nine Swords as a “powers for fighters”project. The effort required to splice the mechanics into 3rdEdition were a bit extreme, but the experiment was worth it.

Second Orcus (Orcus II) Design Phase:February to March 2006
Team:Rob Heinsoo (lead), Bruce Cordell, James Wyatt.
Mission: Finish monsters and other areas that were weakin the first draft. Follow some new design directions suggestedby the development team.
Outcome: After the design phase ended, several weeks of playtesting left most of us unconvinced with where we weregoing. The system wasn’t working the way we wanted it to work.

One Development Week: Mid-April 2006
Team: Robert Gutschera, Mike Donais, Rich Baker, MikeMearls, and Rob Heinsoo.
Mission:Recommend a way forward.
Outcome: In what I’d judge as the most productive weekof the process to date, not that anyone would have guessed that beforehand, Mearls and Baker figured out what was going wrong with the design. We’d concentrated too much on the new approach without properly accounting for what 3.5handled well. We’d provided player characters with constantlyrenewing powers, but hadn’t successfully parsed the necessarydistinctions between powers that were always available andpowers that had limited uses.

Flywheel Team: May 2006 to September 2006
Team: Rob Heinsoo (lead), Andy Collins, Mike Mearls,David Noonan, and Jesse Decker.
Mission: Move closer to 3.5 by dealing properly withpowers and resources that could be used at-will, once perencounter, or once per day.
Outcome: A playable draft that went over to the teams that would actually write the Player’s Handbook and the Monster Manual.

Scramjet Team; Same Timing as Flywheel
Team: Rich Baker (lead), James Wyatt, Matt Sernett, EdStark, Michele Carter, Stacy Longstreet, and Chris Perkins.
Mission: Draft a new vision for the world and the storybehind the D&D game.
Outcome: A first draft of the story bible, notable for its new understanding of civilized portions of the D&D world as points of light threatened by enveloping darkness filled with monstersand other threats.

Player’s Handbook Creation:October 2006 to April 2007
Designers:Rich Baker (lead), Logan Bonner, and DavidNoonan.
Developers: Andy Collins (lead), Mike Mearls, SteveSchubert, and Jesse Decker.
Mission: Achieve design and development consensus onthe direction each role and class should take; make good onthe goals with playable mechanics.
Outcome: Oodles of powers. Semisolid rules set

Writing Phase: April 2 to May 11, 2007
Story Team: James Wyatt (lead), Rich Baker, BruceCordell, and Chris Sims (with advice and general nosinessfrom Bill Slavicsek).
Mission: Write prose manuscripts in the style we want touse for the finished products.
Outcome: The team turned over a 600-plus-page workingrules set on deadline and to specifications.

Magic Item Revision: May 2007
Mechanics Design: Rob Heinsoo, Mike Mearls, DavidNoonan, and Matt Sernett.
Mission: Re-create the vision for what magic items accom-plish in the new design, carve separate space for each type of item, and design them all.
Outcome: More magic items than our initial publicationscan use!
Full-On Playtesting: June 2007
Mission: With Dave Noonan handling the reins, all designers and developers and many other WotC employees donothing but playtest D&D 4E for three solid weeks. This led to ongoing playtesting using in-house groups and the personal game groups of most of the R&D staff that continues to the endof the year.

Now, a bit more backstory, Robert Gutschera is this guy. Unlike the inmates currently running the asylum, he can do math.

Now there's a bit I would like to pull out of the story and have it stand on its own:

Baker, Donais, and Mearls translated current versions of the Orcus I mechanics into a last-minute revision of Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords.

Got that? Book of Nine Swords wasn't used as a template for 4e, the 4e that Robert Gutschera made that they scrapped was used as template for the Bo9S.

So here's the question that I think is on everyone's mind, or at least should be: how the fuck did the Flywheel team manage to oust the only guy who could do fucking math from project leadership in order to make the turkey that 4th edition actually ended up being? Because you know what? Orcus sounds like a pretty cool game.

-Frank

(Emphasis mine)

This Races & Classes blurb was posted there twice, and it jumped out at me.

People have often talked about Tome of Battle as being a testing ground for 4E. According to this, it was a tried and scrapped approach to 4E quickly ret-conned into 3.5.

[Risada]

So, basically, they scrapped 4ed "Orcus Version" to 3.5, and suddenly melee gets better?

I'm fine with it. Really.

[RobbyPants]

So, basically, they scrapped 4ed "Orcus Version" to 3.5, and suddenly melee gets better?

I'm fine with it. Really.

Yeah, I'm not mad or anything. It's just completely the opposite of what I'd always assumed. ToB always felt like a testing ground for 4E, but it wasn't. It was just a really nice side effect of their R&D work.

[Risada]

Yeah, I'm not mad or anything. It's just completely the opposite of what I'd always assumed. ToB always felt like a testing ground for 4E, but it wasn't. It was just a really nice side effect of their R&D work.

Same here. Now, would it be too much to wait for some kind of side effect like this from 5e? 

[Unbeliever]

Star Wars Saga Edition was also a testing ground for 4E, though unfortunately they seemed to go a different way with a lot of things from it. 

[phaedrusxy]

So, basically, they scrapped 4ed "Orcus Version" to 3.5, and suddenly melee gets better?

I'm fine with it. Really.

Since 4E bombed so badly,  and ToB really improved 3.5, this caused a lot of people to keep playing it over 4E. Since that seems to have shaken up WotC to perhaps cause them to listen to the play-tester feedback, this little "snafu" may wind up have being really good for D&D in the end. Now THAT'S IRONIC, Alanis Morrissette!

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Hmm ... each edition deserves it's own special crazy backstory.


So basically it goes:
Orcus + No ---> Robert Gutschera ---> ToB
Orcus + Heavy Filter ---> No R. Gutschera + lots more new stuff ---> 4e
 

[Necrosnoop110]

So, basically, they scrapped 4ed "Orcus Version" to 3.5, and suddenly melee gets better?

What exactly is the "Orucs Version"? Has the rules/concepts for that ever surfaced?

Thanks,
Necro

[RobbyPants]

So, basically, they scrapped 4ed "Orcus Version" to 3.5, and suddenly melee gets better?

What exactly is the "Orucs Version"? Has the rules/concepts for that ever surfaced?

Thanks,
Necro

I don't think so. I think they were likely like ToB, but with some different underlying mechanics. I don't know if it's fair to say that it was the half-way point from 3E to 4E. I think a good chunk of 4E wend in a different direction than Orcus was originally taking it.

[Ziegander]

Yeah, in the original Orcus document, if this is all to be believed, there were 8 classes to Tome of Battle's 3. I'm really curious now how those other five classes played and what they looked like. Unfortunately, I guess we'll never know.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

hmm ... I could see an intellectual
property rights battle happening.
I'd wanna try it.

Hey DM , I cast: "Summon Gutschera".  What happens?

ToB as 1/2 way from 3e to 4e?  Yeah maybe so.
Somebody posted a web hits + time on site chart
about wizards.com , and the slow long tail effect
was reversed by ToB.  Big spike for it, and then
hastened the fizzle after.  I'd bet the collective
unconscious of 3e figured out that ToB was the
"fix" the game was looking for.

I've lost that link; can no longer confirm (gleemax?).
And in any case, my point is mere conjecture ...
Still I'd absolutely bet on it.