Thoughts on D&D 4E: Round Two
Hello, all.
You may have noticed that I decided to give my good friend Randy a shot at expressing his thoughts on Fourth Edition, and why it isn’t for him. I did this for a couple of reasons:
- I’m interested in Randy’s opinion. We are part of the same extended gaming group and while, because we both tend to DM we don’t often play at each others’ tables, I am interested in what our shared players might think and feel from the other side of things. Beyond that, we’re good friends and I genuinely wanted to know the reasoning behind his distaste for 4E.
- I think our gaming group is probably not that different than other gaming groups. Some folks play 4E and say “I like it” or “I don’t like it,” some folks don’t even read the books and say “it’s crap,” and some folks (like Randy) DO read the books and decide they don’t want to try it. The dynamic between those positions is worth discussing in a public way.
Now, I haven’t said a whole lot about 4E here since release. I mentioned I liked the idea of Rules Convergence and I gave a peek into what I thought about Keep on the Shadowfell both before and after I played it. Before release, I talked about liking the new cosmology (which I believe Randy’s adopted at his table. Correct me if I’m wrong here, bro). I also talked before release about why I was confident that 4E would be a good product. But I haven’t given a thorough opinion.
I’ll be doing that, over the next few posts (hopefully they’ll come more often than once a week, LOL). But I want to specifically address Randy’s complaints, and tell you all what I think about them. I’m not doing this as much to argue with Randy (we’re completely cool between us on the issue) but to broaden the discussion with my readers. Let’s go through the list, the way he presents them:
1)The powers section for PCs just scream ” goofy” to me.
I haven’t had the same experience. I think I’ve figured out why it is, too. See,once I accepted the fact that “Hit Points” were no longer representative of physical damage, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. D&D isn’t about physical health anymore; it’s about heroic acts and the flow of battle. An ally’s ferocity or focus in battle is boosted when I fell my foe? I can buy that easily.
Would it have been easier to accept if they dropped hit points and called it “Hero points?” Maybe, but that sounds a bit wonky. No, I think this is the right move. Let’s get away from this idea that every hit does physical damage. The fact is, hit points as physical damage makes no sense when a naked character can be run through from behind at the dinner table without hardly getting a scratch on him, while it would kill any peasant or king.
As for the ritual thing, I’m not certain Randy’s got a correct reading of the rules. As I understand it, a fighter can’t just pick up a resurrection scroll and use it. Even If he can, though, I can live with it - the magic is in the item, not the user. It doesn’t affect my gameplay that much. I’ve been accused of handing out resurrections too freely, yet my players keep coming back. What do I care if the fighter can read the resurrection scroll I conveniently leave for the party?
2) The game is way too board/minis gamey for me.
Having played through two sessions, I can tell you 4E is the same amount of board-gamey as 3E, no more, no less. There’s very little different in this regard. The leap from AD&D to 3E was what made D&D more like a board game, and nothing’s changed in gameplay. Besides, it’s the DM and his ability to foster good roleplaying (which Randy, for example, does with extreme awesomeness) that keeps a D&D session from becoming a board game anyways.
3) The game just looks boring.
Again, having played 2 sessions, I can tell you 4E wasn’t boring for me. Quite the opposite, I had a blast.
Part of Randy’s argument here is the question of how things scale. I think there’s a danger when you’ve only got core books to say, “gosh, this looks limited. How boring will this be at 30th level?” By the time most of us play 30 levels, though, there will be scores of new books with all sorts of options we haven’t even thought of. That’s how Basic D&D worked; that’s how 3E worked; that’s just how D&D works. Core provides a startup experience with a high learning curve; supplements shake the shit up, so to speak.
The other part of this has to do with everything being “damage.” I think this goes back to the conversation about hit points. 4E uses familiar terminology in a new way to redefine how things work. You no longer make a will save, your opponent attacks you with an attack against your will “defense.” Is that different? Absolutely. Too different for some folks? Probably. Does that detract from gameplay? Not in my experience.
4) The GSL.
I’m more or less indifferent to the GSL and couldn’t tell you whether current rumors are speculation or not. Here’s why: I’m not an indie publisher. For the most part, I don’t usually play with Indie D&D products. I like the idea of there being competition in the marketplace, because it makes everyone’s products better. There’s nothing here to elicit any emotion from me in either direction on the GSL. I’m agnostic on this point. I can see where third party publishers might be really pissed, if the rumors are true.
5) The new DnD stuff is cheap looking crap.
I mentioned my problems with the production value in Keep on the Shadowfell already. However, the core books are better, much better. There are some printers errors and some indexing problems in the PHB, but I haven’t seen anything else that would make me say the books were cheap-looking or crap.
I can’t speak intelligently about the D&D minis. I don’t collect them. I buy individual figs I might like. Mostly, I paint my own minis. Yes, it’s discouraging if the D&D minis start to suck, but it doesn’t affect me much more than the GSL. Randy (and some of our other local guys) are big collectors, so I know this probably bugs them. All I can say here is this: don’t buy the minis if they suck. Reaper minis look a thousand times better anyways.
As far as repeat art, I don’t think the volume was particularly overwhelming. The Monster Manual certainly had plenty of new and interesting artwork.
See, I’m OK with some re-used art. Always have been. I want to think about this statement: “WOTC can afford new art.” First off, D&D isn’t and will never be the most profitable division of Hasbro, or even WotC. Magic has a much higher margin, for cample. This isn’t the right question, though, whether or not W0tC has enough money. The question is this: “Will consumers pay $X more per book to get 100% new art vs. 95% new art?” There is a point of diminishing returns, a point at which we either pay more for the books or they substitute a few older pictures.
Don’t get me wrong; I like new art. But I don’t buy D&D books for the artwork any more than I buy them for the stories. Stories belong in novels, artwork belongs in art books (Vallejo books, for example, are about half the cost of D&D books for twice as much art). I like stories and art in my rulebooks, but they’re not the reason I buy them.
6) Paizo and Monte Cook.
I asked the question a while back: Does Monte matter? Read my comments on that post, but I’ll throw out one quote from there: “if you press me, I’m going to tell you that I like Jim Wyatt and Mike Mearls at least as much as I like Monte, or probably more in the case of Jim.” Monte’s a non-starter issue for me. I like the guys at Paizo, they do great work. But I’m not dumping D&D for them. I recognize that’s a purely personal preference, and that Monte’s got a HUGE fan base. He is *the* rockstar in the D&D world.
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As you can tell, a large portion of the 4E debate comes down to personal preferences and habits. For my part, I don’t collect D&D minis. I don’t intend to publish anything under the GSL. I’m not worried at all about what Monte Cook does; I have other favorite designers. I like the idea of rules convergence. I accept the idea of hit points as totally separate from physical damage. I like the idea that the magic in an item is really in the item. Not everyone buys into these preferences, and I’m cool with that completely.
Do I think Randy will go 4E within a couple of years, like he jokes about? Maybe. Maybe not. There are guys, many of whom read this blog, that still play some version or another of AD&D or even OD&D. I’m cool with that. We’re all friends in the big D&D world. They don’t spit on my version of the game and I don’t spit on theirs. It’s all good.
What about the rest of you? How’s your gaming group handling it? What do you think about Randy’s problems with 4E and my replies? Do share.
Image by mborowick
Sunday RPG Link Smashup- June 15, 2008
Just because I liked the pic so much, and because the photographer commented on my blog last week… Let’s make her the unofficial Sunday RPG Link Smashup mascot, shall we? Disavian, What do you say?
photo credit: disavian | Got Links?
Anyways, let’s move on.
So, what’s going on in the world of RPGs this week?
Well, for starters, Chatty has an awesomely funny post (at least it’s funny to me) about how he can’t seem to let a paladin live in his campaigns: I Don’t do Paladins Really Well… I have the same problem, but with any character played by my friend Phil.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet here, so I will now. If you don’t already Do Yax’s Sunday Morning Quiz right after reading my Link Smashup, you should. Just sayin’.
Bartoneous, who is fast becoming one of my favorite D&D blog writers, has another awesome post on the 4E/WoW question: How to Compare Birds to Fish
Greywulf is also quickly rising on my fave blogger scale. Check out Wolverine Is A Warlock to see why.
It’s amazing what 32 hours straight of 4E will do to a gaming group. Critical Ankle Bites has it here: Final thoughts after marathon 4e release day events.
All right, time to cash it in, folks. See you again real soon!
Sunday RPG Link Smashup- June 8, 2008
The core 4E books are out, and reactions are starting to spread across the blogosphere. Here are a few of the most interesting articles on 4E That I’ve found this week:
Martin over at Gnome Stew does it again by recounting his first impressions of 4E. Some of the phrases that jump out at me: “Mercifully brief setup” and “Solid simplifications.” You may not may not like the idea of simplification or the rules convergence that leads to simplification, but you can’t deny it’s present in 4E.
photo credit: disavian | Got Links?
I missed Game Day due to the fact that we live waaay out in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, Chatty’s got a Game Day recap, along with his thoughts about 4E.
The boys over at Critical Hits have a couple of 4E Roundtable discussions worth taking a look at. Among the interesting concepts? Half-elves apparently blow.
Greywulf, who inspired my post on balance the other day, has a compelling final analysis of Core 4E. His take? 4E is a mixed bag, but an improvement.
I even have a couple of non-4E articles for you to check out too.
Ben Overmyer of Silver Gryphon Games has a guest post at Capturing Fantasy on the Four Types of RPG Players. These are the four player archetypes we’ve talked about for years, but Ben’s put them in an interesting context here. There’s also still time to get into the CF launch contest if you haven’t already done so.
Speaking of contests, Yax is giving more stuff away. This time, he’s offering up 3 Forgotten Realms books. Get over there and enter today!
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OK, I know I’ve overloaded you with posts today, but I wanted to offer one more thought. Several of us in the gaming blog world use Twitter on a regular basis, and it has proven to be a much more usable tool for me in finding good RPG links than my feed reader. Here are some of the folks I recommend following:
@WritingJourney (That’s me)
@GreyWulf (Um, that’s Greywulf, of course)
@ChattyDM (You know Chatty)
@MenwithPens (from Capturing Fantasy)
@VegasPenMan (Harry from Capturing Fantasy)
If you’re on twitter, feel free to post your ID in the comments to this post.
Tomorrow: Some talk about the new name, and discussion of who almost won. Don’t miss it!
Balance and Rules Convergence in Dungeons and Dragons 4E
It’s all about balance.
Greywulf had an excellent post up at his Lair today. He offers up some of his thoughts on 4E, and how he sees some of the emerging trends.
Here are a some of the main points he makes:
- Game balance should be secondary to enjoyment of the game.
- 4E is combat-heavy, and has little to offer in the way of role playing.
- Because 4E is combat heavy, the classes have all been adjusted to be balanced in combat.
I agree completely that game balance is secondary. I’d even go as far as to say that game balance is, in some ways, an illusion. D&D isn’t a perfect system, mathematically, and it never will be. In my group especially, I don’t worry about game balance because we’re all friends. No one is going to be jealous of another player because of character abilities.
I don’t, however, agree with the other two points. On the first point, I’ll offer you the comment I left over a the lair:
I’m intrigued by what you’re saying here about 4E being so heavy on combat. To me, Keep on the Shadowfell was impressive the way that it handled the NPC interactions during the “interlude” stages. For the first time in a while, I felt like I really knew the NPCs, and could role-play them effectively without having to re-create them in my own head.
True, Shadowfell was a bit encounter-heavy, but no more so than Demonweb Pits.
So, my experience was totally different that Greywulf’s. Which one of us is right, or most reflects how 4E will be? Hell if I know. Time will tell. But here’s the thing: I believe, firmly, that a rule set can’t encourage good role-playing. That’s up to the people playing the game. A complex ruleset can get in the way of good roleplaying, as can one with social “skill checks” like in 3E. But, like with 3E, there are ways around that.
As to the question of the classes being more closely matched in combat ability, I think what Greywulf and others are seeing is simply rules convergence. This is the idea, very present in 4E, that the classes ought to play in a similar fashion, even if their abilities are vastly different. In other words, differences in classes matter most in flavor, not in mechanics.
I like this. In fact, here’s the other part of what I said at the Lair:
In fact, I’m of a mind that the rules convergence may well prove to be the smartest thing D&D ever did. Think about it: my friend who’s only ever played a paladin because he understands the mechanic can now play anything he wants. That’s a boon to many folks, especially newcomers to the game.
So, what do you all think? Really, there are 2 questions here. First, how important is game balance, if at all? Second, is rules convergence a good thing?
photo credit: SuperFantastic
Keep on the Shadowfell - Session 1 Thoughts
On Saturday, five of my good friends and I gave Keep on the Shadowfell, the preview module for DnD 4E, a whirl. Without giving away spoilers, here are my thoughts:
- I like the feel of the mechanic. It was easy to master, and some of the monster abilities were hella cool.
- combat lasted just about the right amount of time, given we were learning the system. I think that, in time, it will speed up. If it’s true that combat at 25th level should take the same amount of time as 1st level, then they’ve definitely got this right.
- Story-wise, the developers did a wonderful job. I especially liked the NPC characterizations as written. I didn’t have to add much of anything.
- I’m not sure, yet, about the flavor matching the mechanic. There were some PC abilities that looked cool but didn’t seem to make sense. It will be interesting to see if they make more sense when we’re less concerned about learning a mechanic, and more able to devote time to the flavor.
- I did shut my guys down at one point. There was some serious 4E trash talk going on, and I felt like it would be better to have that after the game as opposed to during. Some of it was good-natured ribbing, but I think some of it may have been serious concerns.
- The players who I thought would hate it seemed to have a good time.
- The players I thought would be more open minded seemed to have more problems with the rules than the other folks.
It will be interesting to see what the fellas think after we finish Keep on the Shadowfell next session. I’m prepared for the worst; I like what I see. I’m probably 70% sold, after seeing it played. We’ll have to see how it goes with the guys. I’ve got a splinter group ready and willing to play 4E if I need to, but I’d much rather run with these guys.
So, what about you? If you’ve played Keep, was your experience similar? If you haven’t played, what do you anticipate?
Keep on the Shadowfell
I’m not sure how, but I managed to devote a couple of hours last night to flipping through Keep on the Shadowfell, the preview adventure for D&D 4E. Now, until it’s played, I will reserve full judgment, but here is what I’m getting at first blush:
4E completes the work of making D&D a true gaming system, rather than a loosely-connected ruleset.
To be sure, 3E started this process, and it is the right path for D&D to take. No one has ever suggested that the rules in OD&D through AD&D 2nd Edition were balanced. In many cases, they were a bunch of disjointed ideas gathered in one place with often disastrous results. Did that make it a bad game? Of course not. If AD&D had sucked horribly, I wouldn’t be writing this blog today.
But, the next logical step in the evolution of the game was to truly systematize the ruleset. 3E started that process, and 4E seems to take to it’s logical conclusion. One of the things that 4E is sometimes criticized for is it’s resemblance to a Collectible Card Game. This may be true, to a degree; while there are no cards per se, creature and character stats and abilities have specific mechanical language, language that helps to define the rules of the game.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s good insofar as game balance is a concern. I also think it streamlines the system side of things, making it an easier game to learn. That brings me to my next point:
Keep on the Shadowfell reminds me of Basic D&D.
With a player’s guide and an adventure book, the opening pages of Keep on the Shadowfell read like Basic D&D. It lays the whole system out in just a few pages, and does a decent job of describing how D&D works to the initiate. While I’m certain the core books will feel very different, Keep on the Shadowfell is the sort of product a 13 year-old fantasy geek could pick up and be playing with his compatriots within a couple of hours. I’m not sure I can say that about any D&D product since Basic.
This is decidedly good. Anything that brings in a younger generation of players is a good thing. More players means more money, which means more R&D, which means higher-quality products. And, as a seasoned D&D player, I’m not offended in the least by the teaching tone of Keep on the Shadowfell. It’s designed to be introductory material.
So, what else is going on in Keep on the Shadowfell?
Keep on the Shadowfell is decidedly encounter-heavy, but also contains a sufficient amount of role-play material.
For me, D&D is collaborative storytelling, more than killing things and taking their stuff. The problem with collaborative storytelling is the collaborative part: you can never be certain what players will do. As such, it’s hard to design the story side of things for a single gaming group, much less a huge market of gamers. Having said that, D&D has done well over the years in providing some good role-play material.
Here’s what I like about the role-play material in Keep on the Shadowfell: it is designed such that any DM can pick up the adventure and implement the important NPC interactions with little trouble. This adventure really spells things out. Even so, Keep on the Shadowfell also offers DMs ideas about different directions they could take the role-playing side of things, which is something I’ve not seen enough of in recent D&D adventure materials.
If there is something I’d criticize about Keep on the Shadowfell, it is that combat encounters take precedence over non-combat encounters. I can’t say this is that different from previous versions, however.
There is something else I’ll criticize, too.
I’m mildly disappointed in the production value of Keep on the Shadowfell.
Keep on the Shadowfell consists of an Adventure booklet, a Players’ booklet, and 4 dual-sided poster maps, all inside of a card stock folder-style sleeve. This isn’t bad in itself, but I think Wizards cut some corners that they shouldn’t have here. I don’t mind paying $30 for a soft back adventure with 4 poster maps, especially one that is designed so well. Here’s what I have a problem with: the adventure booklet and the players’ booklet have standard glossy magazine-page quality covers. That stinks. Would it really have hurt production costs that much to use card stock or even a thicker glossy paper for the cover? I get that the cardboard sleeve is supposed to protect the contents, but I’m not going to read the thing inside the sleeve.
The production value isn’t horrid in the way that some 3rd party 3E products were horrid. Honestly, I think it’s just the cover thing that bugs me here.
Overall analysis
I give Keep on the Shadowfell 8.5 out of 10 stars. My personal preference for non-combat encounters and the crappy booklet covers keep it from hitting the top.
The real test will be next Monday, when I run the group through it for the first time. Hopefully, I can have some analysis shortly thereafter!
Check out Session Report & Review: Keep on the Shadowfelll (Part 1) from Critical Hits for more analysis.
The Night Before DnD-Mas
Keep on the Shadowfell, the 4E preview module, debuts tomorrow.
Tell me your final thoughts, just before it goes live.
Eve of Destruction:
or
Start of Something Big?
Dungeons and Dragons 4E Cosmology and Core World
One of the massive changes taking place in Dungeons and Dragons 4E is the creation of a core world. Up to this point, D&D has only ever provided players with elements of a core world or core cosmology - such as the old Greyhawk Deities in D&D 3E.
This change is a long time coming. Think about it: you’re a new D&D player. You pick up the core books at Barnes & Noble, and you want to run D&D for your friends. As it stands today, you either have to buy a campaign setting or create your own world from scratch. Do you know how overwhelming it is for a first-time DM to do either one of those? With the number of campaign settings, the neophyte won’t even know where to begin. Even if he does, what if he picks a crappy setting? He and his cohorts will write D&D off altogether. And don’t get me started on how lost the new DM feels trying to create a world. I’ve been DMing for almost three decades, so I enjoy campaign creation; and that new DM will too, in a couple of years.
Including a core setting and cosmology doesn’t forbid anyone from creating their own. In fact, WotC is now making the various campaign settings part of core. This means you can have a near-infinite number of settings and cosmologies without breaking the game. That’s a sweet deal, and it’s overdue.
For some other thoughts about these changes, check out this article at Critical Hits: D&D 4e: A Whole New World.
So, what do you all think? Is this a good move, or not?
The Rumors of my Demise
have been greatly exaggerated.
Same goes for another rumor, I think.
Apis mentioned in the comments of Friday’s post a little rumor going around the Internets about how Wizards of the Coast won’t be at Gen Con this year.
I’ve listened to the reasons people are bantering about. Really, I have. Most of them are pure crap. My favorite is the one that says George Lucas is insanely mad at Peter Atkinson over Star Wars Celebration and the lawsuit. C’mon, boys. Do you really buy into the conspiracy theory that George Lucas is sitting in his throne passing out dictates to HASBRO?!? About something that is, in Lucas terms, a pittance?
photo by Official Star Wars Blog
Now, there is a slight possibility that Hasbro won’t allow WotC to go to Gen Con because of its policy about doing business with companies in bankruptcy, but I seriously doubt that’s going to be the case. There were still Hasbro products on the shelves at K-mart while they were restructuring.
So, why am I so confident that WotC will be at Gen Con? One reason:
Dungeons and Dragons 4E will be less than a quarter old.
It’s possible that Gen Con needs WotC more than WotC needs Gen Con most years. 2008 will be different, though: WotC won’t have sales figures available on 4E by the time they’d need to put events in motion for Gen Con. WotC can’t take the risk that they will alienate a large portion of their fanbase and sacrifice the largest single event-based marketing campaign of the year by sitting it out. WotC needs Gen Con this year to solidify the market position of Dungeons and Dragons 4E.
WotC can’t afford to skip Gen Con, at least not in 2008. DDXP, however successful it’s becoming for them, still isn’t Gen Con.
Am I wrong? What do you all think? Will WotC show in August?
Oh, and 5 Internet points to whomever can tell me where the title quote comes from.
D&D: Still Kicking Ass After Forty Years
Look, I’m going to make this post simple.
I’ve come to a conclusion.
With apologies to some of my local fellas and a hell of a lot of folks on teh Intarweb, I need to say this:
Fourth Edition is going to ROCK.
Why?
4E has Rockstar developers at the helm.
Mike Mearls and Jim Wyatt are two of the best damned Dungeons and Dragons writers still at WotC. These guys kick ass. They know what the hell they are doing when it comes to game design. I haven’t seen anything from either one of them that sucked yet. The same people bitching about how 4E is going to suck are the ones that eat up everything else Rob Heinsoo and Andy Collins write!
4E is the natural evolution of the game.
The complaints I hear about 4E are, by and large, things that tie Dungeons and Dragons to the past: “it’s too much like an MMORPG,” or “Dungeons and Dragons Insider is a waste of money,” or even “Monte Cook isn’t involved, how could it possibly be good?”
There’s not one damn thing that’s been released about 4E that sucks.
No, it’s not all great. A lot of it is new, revolutionary even. But I can’t look at one rule and say ”that completely sucks. It will break the game.”
If we don’t have a rules reset, the game will die.
There are too many fracking rules to this game. Die-hard old-school bullshit aside, the fact of the matter is that Dungeons and Dragons is just a game. Yeah, it’s the best game ever invented, and it’s more of a hobby to most of us than a mere game. But it’s too complex. Too involved. Too damn many options that get in the way of the story. It’s time. Hell, it’s past time.
———-
Some folks are skeptical, I get it. Some folks are convinced 4E will be the worst game ever. But, others think it will be the best game ever. I get that some folks think of WotC as the Evil Microsoft of the gaming world, with Paizo set to take over once 4E fails. Some people even worry that 4E is somehow less real than 3E. Some folks are just plain scared.
It’s time, though. It’s time to move past all the skepticism, all the hate, all the anger about having to buy 3 new core books. It’s time to take an honest look at 4E. I’m convinced we’re going to find that, if we give it a fair shake, we’re going to like it. If we go in determined to hate it, then we will.
Photo by paulmed
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