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."

Comments

Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products...

[podperson]

I finally understand D&D. In D&D the rules are the content. They need to change them frequently because you run out of content. If you're actually interested in stories and "role-playing" (vs. leveling up and trying out new spells and magic items), then D&D's rules get in the way and you play something else... You also prefer your rules not to change constantly.

Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products...

[Aladrin]

You say that as if it's negative, but I see it otherwise.

While I haven't played a lot of pen & paper D&D, there have been quite a few video games based on fairly loose rules that you use in the right way to really come up with a great character.

For instance: In Guild Wars, someone figured out that you could purposefully use runes to reduce your health to about 10% of what other people had... And use the game's rules to keep yourself healed and deal major damage to a whole group of enemies all at once. This is obviously WAY beyond what the game designers had thought of, and shows how flexible the system is. To this day, people are still finding new combinations of classes and skills that seem to be way overpowered. Most of them COULD have been created on day 1, but were just finally imagined.

I see D&D's rules and arguments about the rules in the same way. All those arguments come from people interpreting the rules or the rules' interactions differently and coming up with new strategies. So for those who just want to play mindlessly, it's a pointless argument. For those that care, it's pretty much a basic part of the fun.

Re:I'm not buying any more WoTC products...

[thebdj]

I finally understand D&D. In D&D the rules are the content. They need to change them frequently because you run out of content. If you're actually interested in stories and "role-playing" (vs. leveling up and trying out new spells and magic items), then D&D's rules get in the way and you play something else... You also prefer your rules not to change constantly. I call bullshit, not only from the D&D perspective, but from all other RPG perspectives. I know people who still play Second Edition World of Darkness, which was replaced by Third Edition (and now the "New World of Darkness"); there are also people who refused to ever change to 3rd Ed D&D. The rules provide a framework, the rest is based on your imagination. If your GM/DM/ST (or whatever you want to call them) is unimaginative, then yes, you might get hindered by what is in the rulebook. The fact is a good GM can create new settings, add new characters, add new creatures, or change the entire outlay of the world.

There are rules and systems in place for a lot of these creations that GMs make. People have created tons of player generated content for various RPGs, which other people will in turn adopt. I have seen where an entirely new game was created within the rules of a larger system, like White Wolf's World of Darkness. You are truly only confined by the rules of these systems if you let yourself be that way.