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Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Announced
bigstrat2003 writes "For the past day, Wizards of the Coast has had a countdown to "4dventure" on their web site. The countdown ran out at 6:30 eastern time today (and the web site promptly crashed), but stories are already appearing on the rest of the web. Wizards also has had their 4th edition forums up for a couple of days."
I think it might be a first: An anonymous coward, posting racial slurs, who openly admits that he has no balls. Truth in advertising at long last?
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First they cancel the popular and successful Dungeon and Dragon magazines by not renewing the subscription with Paizo, and next they pull a stunt like this? I don't believe I'm the only one to find the DRM-laden "Digital Initiative" to be potentially a very poor substitute for the magazines, and this blunder will only compound the ill will directed against them.
This move will only alienate their consumer base. The fact that 3.5 is working, and in no need of overhaul, exposes the fact that they are doing this under the motivation of short-sighted greed. I shudder to think what sort of backlash (as before with Dungeon and Dragon were canceled) is taking place on the forum.
I'm literally in shock right now. I thought Wizards of the Coast understood its consumer base better and was comprised of people more concerned about the integrity of the game and more competent about long-term business strategies.
I had to try 3e when it came out... I figured it was really cool that my favorite RPG was getting a facelift, as I was never really satisfied with the 2nd edition rules. But alas, after trying it out and playing it for a few weeks I concluded that it was a big mistake to have sold all my 2e stuff to finance the purchasing of 3rd edition material. 3rd edition D&D was not a role playing game as I understood it... it was basically just a pen-and-paper version of a computer game, requiring a ridiculous amount of number crunching and bean counting. Suddenly every single thing that a character was supposedly able to do was governed by a skill associated with a number... taking away a vital element of creativity that in my opinion is a vital core of any real RPG. Rather than trying to reacquire the 2nd edition stuff I formerly had, however, I decided instead to go all the way back to the beginning (well, almost) and go with first edition AD&D, because the number of books published for it was small enough that it wouldn't completely break my pocketbook to get them all. I spent a couple of weeks hunting for bargains on ebay and eventually got all the hardcover rulebooks for the game. I bought pdf's of modules through rpgnow, and I was good to go. I have now have a group of 4 players, and we play weekly.
Fans of 1st edition AD&D, check out the Dragonsfoot web site. 2nd edition is well received there too.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That would be a very good thing.
Predictions:
1) reductions in all rules requiring any DM adjudication
2) more caster nerfing to "balance" the classes across all levels
3) a new campaign world
4) idiotic marketing
Wizards doesn't seem to get the idea that it doesn't have enough momentum to carry the MMORPG market.
Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and the (incredible) Planescape:Torment put them on perfect footing to make a huge splash in the MMORPG arena, but they chose to hack their dong off by setting Dungeons and Dragons Online in Eberron, their new PnP setting.
Mind you DDO launched well after WoW.
They actually decided, I can only assume, to set their 1st mainstream attempt at an MMORPG in a completely foreign world to most of their customers in order to drive book sales.
Books.
Pulp.
Magazines. (now sadly gone)
That's how out of touch they were.
Wizards is still trapped in a world where metal must hit paper to make money, to their loss.
WoTC got its start with Magic, the object of which is to purchase as much printed matter from WoTC as possible.
When 4th Edition comes out it will have been about 8 years since the 3rd edition books came out. Being mad because they were inconsiderate enough to release a new set of rules after that length of time seems a bit silly to me. Especially since the new edition coming out in no way makes the version you have less fun to play.
How come you aren't pissed that they made a 3rd Edition in the first place? How dare they give you a new system to use!
People said the same damn thing about D&D, and then AD&D, and then second edition AD&D, and then D&D 3.0. "I'm not buying the new edition, I wasted more money than I can count on these [lame-ass over-priced useless] source books!"
A year or two after the new edition was out, they all usually break down and buy the new edition, sell off their old books to collectors or hobby stores, and move on.
Or you can be one of those old foggies who swears by the old edition, never upgrades, and then runs out of people to play with. But then, if you honestly bought every single 3.5 source book (seriously, why the hell would you possibly need all of those?), I imagine you have bigger problems than finding people to play with.
D&D, on the other hand, is played by small groups of people, rather than in tournaments. There's nothing they could do to stop house rules if they tried. Similarly, there's nothing they could do to stop house rules in Magic if they tried, as long as you're not talking about a sanctioned tournament.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I really like the idea of a new D&D version. It's a chance to improve some of the imperfect rules in the last edition. For instance the fact that it's nearly impossible to create a fast moving dexterous fighter that has parity with a burly strength based one.
As far as people complaining about having to buy another version I sympathize but you don't have to buy the new version and WoTC shouldn't be forced not to fix the system just because some of us bought the previous version. I don't know if I will buy the new one (I have 3.5) but the next generation of gamers shouldn't be stuck with the imperfections of the system we played.
On the other hand I'm a bit worried about the online subscription part. The publication of feats and other rule changes in dragon was bad enough but an online subscription has even more of an official air about it and will give WoTC a very strong incentive to put overpowerful feats in the subscription. Hopefully, they will mostly just include story/background material and the occasional fix but we will have to wait and see.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
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....and using some 1'st edition rules and books too. I just think D&D has kinda lost its "magic" that made the original game. I never really got into 3'rd edition or 3.5 edition. It's not about rules, it's about gameplay and overall 'feel' that made D&D what it is. If you didn't like a rule - throw it out. if you want to change something, then change it. The heart of D&D has always been flexibility to adapt. updaing the rules ad-nauseum doesn't bring the original theme back. In fact it dilutes the game.
I like how WotC's idea of "revolutionary product delivery" is "We can sell them paper ... on computers!"
Granted, they are adding that online client "to 'supplement, not replace' meatspace play," and a client like that is something that me and my friends have been saying would be cool for years now, but ...
They're still just selling us paper, but on computers.
Speaking of sex, I always wondered why there were no Upper Plane equivalent of Succubus. I mean, flirty fishing works and would be a perfect fit for Chaotic Good outsiders, so why don't they go about seducing blackguards away from evil or something ? A wink, kiss and some bedroom gymnastics could easily stop entire evil armies in their tracks.
In fact I'd say that the Balance requires such beings, unless of course sex is inherently evil in the DnD universe. I guess WotC is just too prudish to add them...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You can end a whole fight with a color spray, sleep, or web. I've tanked before as a 5th level sorcerer before, since with shield, mage armor and alter self up the monsters couldn't hit him, and if they did hit him, he'd just recast false life.
While you might think that playing a wizard is difficult, I've leveled up enough wizards and sorcerers through the years to know their strength in low levels is things like the above, not pitching out the solitary useless 1d4+1 magic missiles. You just find the niche for yourself, play smart with conserving your spells, and they'll do just as well as the raging 26 strength half-orc barbarian. Not in damage, but if you knock out 3 enemies with a color spray, that's just as good as killing three people in one action.
When you hit 8th level or so, then the damage spells come into their own power, and you start casting the big fireballs, combusts, etc., with an empower slapped on top of it for extra gas. 12d8 (no save) all day long from an empowered combust outshines the barbarian, and at 10th level, the 15d6 empowered fireballs will rack up huge amounts of damage against groups of enemies.
Like I said, there's really no weak spot for them, as long as you know how to play. Of course, with a philosophy like that, I *do* usually end up getting stuck playing the wizard in home groups. =)
Why would a new revision of the tabletop rules impact their online offering?
The differences between DDO and 3.5 are considerable.
Ability to modify the rules is no excuse for bad rules. The problem with 3.5e is that it is only balanced for the "iconic" party of 4: meatshield fighter, blaster wizard, healbot cleric, skillmonkey rogue. If you bothered to read the rules you'd quickly realize that this party is highly suboptimal, to the extent that playing a good character (eg. wildshaping druid, battlefield control wizard, self-buffing combat cleric) quickly makes the traditional roles irrelevant without even trying. However, a lot of people have an emotional attachment to tradition, and get upset when their favorite class is useless in combat. This isn't even considering what you can do with addons - Core rules are broken enough as it is. It's not so much "munchkinism" or "optimizing" as having a basic understanding of statistics and not being an idiot.
I hated the 3.0 edition of D&D. It crippled the rather detailed world of D&D2 (i.e. AD&D) with its rich cultural and RP-able background into a hack'n slash orgy much like Diablo. It was geared away from sophisticated RP towards mindless slaughtering of mobs, character development meant "gather stuff" instead of actually developing your char.
Sure, the GM could lessen that effect, but still, what remained was that "character growth" was reduced to killing mobs left and right and looting. If you played actually by the rules, there was no room for "good role play" as something that could be rewarded sensibly.
Then 3.5 came out and, frankly, I hardly looked at it because after the 3.0 desaster, I didn't even want to take a closer look. It looks much like they heard the outcry, but I stick with AD&D.
Now, after everyone bought the books, we're hitting 4.0. So what now? Buy all those books yet again? Thanks, no. There simply is no need to. I can see that you have to stay current with games where you want to play tournaments and compete with people outside your group of friends, like in tabletop games or card games, but for role play? I choose the people I play with carefully. I don't need to compete with anyone outside of my group.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was introduced to TSR's D&D and AD&D in the late seventies while in school, so it only affected my dignity as a pre-teen and I was okay with that. Of course, having a bunch of friends that played meant that I played ocassionally through my teens as well. My parents no doubt approved of this method of birth control.
Coincidentally, I worked at WotC when they aquired TSR, but had long ago stopped playing D&D since I had no time as a working professional and my D&D friends had scattered to the winds after High School. I left WotC before they were acquired by Hasbro, but cannot imagine that move was good for the product.
Now I'm a certified adult with job, mortgage, wife, kids, etc. and cannot imagine having time to play D&D. My kids aren't playing it. They're into Madden '08 and Guitar Hero II or sports outside. They'll ride a bike, surf the web^Wmyspace, chat with friends or play video games.
So who exactly is the core audience for this product? And why did it need to get rev'd into what is apparently a very different game from the story-telling enterprise it was thirty years ago?
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
"I have, nothing special, just the dutch draft system, but I can tell you that a typical military pack is NOT light."
That was my point. A military field pack is around twice the weight of a typical suit of armour, and it's all concentrated in one place instead of being spread around the body, yet trained soldiers carry them over extremely long distances, and then fight battles. An excellent example of this was British paras and commandos, who fought after marching significant distances over extremely rugged terrain in the 1982 Falklands War carrying not only their own field packs and weapons, but also a variety of heavier armaments such as mortars and the ammunition for them (this was variously termed "yomping" and "tabbing", depending on whether one is talking to a marine or para).
"Sure a trained soldier/warrior will be able to do it, BUT not without a stat hit."
Romans routinely marched 50 miles a day on their roads wearing chainmail or lorica and a metal helmet while carrying a large shield, pilum, short sword, and a pack containing a water / wine skin, food, eating and cooking utensils, weapon maintenance equipment, and various digging and cutting tools. At the end of each day's march, they would use their axes to cut down enough trees to act as supports for earth palisades around the entire army, and then use their digging tools to bank the earth, and excavate a deep ditch around this fortified camp. Remains of such "marching camps" indicate that they were often of considerable size, e.g. the one at Raedykes in Scotland that covers 114 acres.
A true historical incident serves to show how different people who spent every day from the moment they could walk doing hard manual labour were from 21st. century Western blobs of grease. King Harald Godwinson force-marched 1500 men from London to Tadcaster, York (185 miles) in 4 days, where they defeated Harald Hadrada's Viking invaders in a day-long battle so convincingly that only 24 of the original 200 invading ships managed to escape. Then, he heard that William The Bastard had invaded in the south, so he force-marched his army back to London in another 4 days, where they stopped only to gather reinforcements, then marched 105 miles to Hastings, and fought another day-long battle against the fresh Norman troops, who were unable to break their shield wall despite having cavalry. Harald's Saxons still had enough energy to pursue fleeing Breton, Flemish, and Norman forces who routed, and although this pursuit led to Harald's eventual defeat, it is an excellent indicator of how hardy pre-industrial people were, especially when one considers that those forced marches weren't on what either we or the Romans would describe as "roads".
"Remember we are after realism, and if you think someone who has just marched through a forest for the day wearing a full combat outfit is as fresh as a person who hasn't, you must be superman."
Historical accounts from periods ranging from early classical to late mediaeval seem to indicate that there was little effective difference in freshness between armoured and unarmoured troops that was actually caused by its weight rather than other factors such as its tendency to trap heat on hot days, and radiate it on cold ones. However, the fact that people from very hot climates such as Greek hoplites and Persians clibanarii wore it, as well as those from cold ones such as Vikings is an excellent indicator of the fact that the advantages it conferred on its wearer far outweighed any discomfort that they endured.
"If you believe that soldiers wore their full equipment all the time because of ease of transportation I suggest you read up on tactics. You can do this, IF you want your soldiers exhausted when they reach wherever they are going."
Copious historical examples show that this is not the case. If tactical sources diverge from historical fact, then those tactical sources should be revised.
"This is known from roman times with accounts from soldiers on the difference between their march
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.