Slashdot Mirror
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Latest News
Lord Aramil of Dreadwood writes "Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'"
Bring back Dark Sun and Planescape you sons of bitches and then your game won't suck anymore. Heck, they even watered down Forgotten Realms for the 3rd edition. Once they stop being pussies and stop whining about their RPGs being too hard they will get the hard core gamers to come back.
When I first saw the headline, I said to myself, "are they kidding?"
In this age of MMORPG's, where issues with game balance can be tweaked monthly, the game universe can be expanded just as often (if not on the fly), and campaigns can involve real-time cooperation among dozens of players, could there really be a thriving market for a pastime as "last-gen" as D&D?
Then it occurred to me, at least with D&D you're actually interacting with real, identifiable people. No griefing, no gold farming, no bots, no avatars with tearing polygons, no server lag to contend with.
Then I could see the market.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
(Said in jest, not out of ignorance)
If you have to tell people in writing you're making a joke, it's often not a very funny one.
I suppose somebody should explain it for the newbs who are passingly curious:...
I could be wrong on this, but the thing is I don't think the grand-parent poster was a newb. I think he's just lost track of all of the rule changes, and to be honest so have I.
It is now literally decades since I played my last game of D&D. Even then however, the rules were just so silly be basically ignored them when playing. The world then was split into D&D and AD&D, with AD&D just having a ludicrous numbers of tables and rules. D&D was the better bet even then, but you ended up buying the AD&D stuff and translating them on-the-fly to more simple D&D rules. And eventually....you just forgot about the rules and told a story, the way role-playing really ought to be. Dice rolls were used and character stats noted, but often I'd just ignore the dice-rolls and get on with the narrative (to the advantage of the players, not because I felt like being a git).
The paragraph being referred to does nothing to convince me that the rules have improved over the years. OK, so this iteration might be an improvement over the last iteration, but anyone who remembers the rules in a thinish paperback with the blue & white cover and a dragon on the front (errr....1980'ish? Slightly before?) will still probably think they've descended into stats-based hell and forgotten the idea of story.
It's up to the DM to fix that of course, but it doesn't sound like the rules are helping.
Cheers,
Ian
just as I was getting comfortable playing 3.5 !!
really, this D&D thing starts to smell like software with every now and then a shiny new release with fresh bugs and annoyances.
and then after a while, surprise surprise! bugfixes!
and then finally when you think things start to settle, tada, yet another 'upgrade' or whatever.
it starts to piss me off.
I know that having more levels is the "in" thing to do.
Originally, in AD&D First Ed, you hit level 20, there was a high chance that your DM would suck up your char sheet because your character was so powerful that it was a god, and not a minor one.
The first MUDs were somewhat based around that, when you hit the topmost level, you became an immortal. The level limit for "ascension" ended up being between 20-30.
As time went on, this limit climbed to 40, 50, then on some MUDs, even was as high as level 100.
Around 1999, MMOs came into the picture. UO didn't use a level based system, but EQ did. To keep players going, and the game interesting for people at the level cap, the original level 50 limit was raised to 60, 65, 70, now 75, and in the next major expansion 80. EQ2 similar, except the game is structured by tiers, starting at 50, then 60, now 70, and will be 80 come the next expansion. WoW too. Next expansion, level 80.
There is something lost in this climb for levels, to the detriment of everything else. In WoW, level pretty much is the gauge of your character's abilities, so a character that is level 70, that has crappy equipment is more often asked for groups/raids than a level 65 with excellent stuff.
I used to DM, and have been since First Edition AD&D. In campaigns, levels were there, but they were mainly a gauge of progress, of what difficulty I needed to make encounters. Characters had a lot more ways to progress and gain in power. They could gain reputation by pushing back orc scout parties, learn spells (In First Ed., magic items were VERY rare, and a +1 sword would be something that would be a 3-4 session campaign, but worth obtaining.), and perhaps travel, guarding trade caravans (or waiting until the caravan was alone, then sacking the people on it.) As the party grew, they became impressed into a local ruler's service as a scout group for taking care of enemies and seeking relics, then the party eventually was able to start their own kingdom after a number of fights, and having to not just go head off places, but make sure the kingdom was in good order while they were gone.
I like levels at a low number. For a lot of intents and purposes, 20 is enough. Epic levels in third edition and up never really played a part, because at that level of character power, I'd have to move the party off of the usual medieval fantasy world into either different spheres (Spelljammer), or do like everyone and their brother does, and start plane hopping, which meant that it wasn't really my campaign world, but just using the Planescape sourcebooks pretty much verbatim.
Maybe I am an old timer, but I try to get player characters to grow "horizontally", and focus on getting reputation, gear, and status with their class guilds, rather than climb the numbers with regards to level. When getting status and doing missions, the XP comes in its due time.
As a player of D&D since third edition (maybe four or five years going, now), I have to say that my group of friends is not particularly interested in investing the time and money of purchasing/learning the new 4.0 source books, when they're finally released. We just don't have a need for them.
As of right now, most of our gaming sessions (which last between 4 and 6 hours) involve at most, a dozen die rolls that mean anything, and I'd say more often than not, a session ends without a single combat. I guess our campaigns have evolved into what could be considered drama. And to be honest, it's a much more enriching experience than a traditional hack & slash game that I so often see with newer/younger players.
This isn't to say we won't do a bit of research into the new system, but if all it does is revise the combat and levelling system, then we won't be adopting 4.0.
While I realize you were trying to be funny (smartass?)... why is it not the fault of the girls? Has society actually reached so low that a girl cannot talk or hang out with people because they enjoy a game? ... that parents teach their kids that "nerdiness" is a bad thing? You realize that this notion is keeping the US in a union labor job rut, right? It's cool to work in a factory, but it's sooo uncool to be a scientist or a programmer? I don't know if you are in the US or another country, but keep thinking this and keep damning your kids to underpaid/overworked manual labor jobs.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
D&D is a game that focuses on killing things and taking their treasure.
D&D is what you make of it. Sounds like you didn't have a very good DM.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, I hope you make it clear to your players that their actions are irrelevant and you are the one directing the play and not them.
Deleted
The problem with MMORPGs is that a lot of the fun in a P&P RPG copmes from the dynamic between the players and GM, in an MMORPGs there's no GM, only rules that the players sooner or later try to bend their way and exploit in every way possible.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
mod parent interesting
The AD&D 3.5 manuals are just too damned complicated. Hundreds of pages and table after table after table. It's more like a software spec than game instructions. No one new is going to get onto this. If you're going to make it that complex, let a computer handle all that messing around.
Enter WoW. It's the AD&D online that AD&D never had. Must irk them to see all that money going to someone else. Their own DDO Stormreach bombed. This is a desperate ploy to cling some of their market back. If they can find people who'll pay $$$ for all new AD&D 4.0 books. In this day and age of the net does it have to be WOTC that rewrite the rules a few solitary voices claim so badly need repairs. Nope. Fans could do this by themselves. WOTC, like the RIAA, are on an outdated business model.
If someone went to a VC with this as a business plan, they'd get laughed out of the office. WOTC on their way out.
Economist Levit wrote a book called "Freakonomics". He talks about how people are willing to pay so-called Experts on the assumption that their advice is worth gold. Trouble is these experts have their own agendas: WOTCs is to sell you a whole new collection of books. At least that's how they figure it. Experts use tricks like information hoarding to convince you only their word can be trusted.
;-)
WOTC, despite the names, aren't Gods. They don't have a divine touch. Fans could rewrite the rules. There's no reason a competent group of fans couldn't do their own rewrite. WOTC would of course do everything in their power to thwart that, and propagate the myth that they're so much better at this than anyone else.
I look at the vast hardbound spaghetti code tomes that is "Got to Collect them all!" AD&D 3.5, and disagree. Don't think for a moment that the D&D 4.0 effort is the work of divine artists struggling for perfection. It's suits with sales targets. If AD&D 4 turns out to be only 16 pages long, I'll retract that. What are the chances of that?
God I wish they made a video game of Paranoia. ... regardless of what you did.
Of course, they would have to make 5 different adventures in the games as all 6 of your clones would be dead within 4 hours of play
The price of their core books is entirely realistic. I work for a major textbook publisher. Anytime somebody complains about buying a $100 textbook when it only costs $3.79 to print one reveals a true ignorance of how business works. There are so many people behind that book.The rest of that $96.21 goes to the authors, the writers (it's a terribly annoying difference), the editors, the marketers, the advertisers, the printers, and scores of other people.
The price is not the problem. The problem is that instead of coming out with a new edition every six months or so, they would do better to spend longer crafting this book and listening to their market... or, if you want terms you can understand, WotC has been consistently taking 10 when they should be taking 20.
Don't cry "Oust Bush," cry "Restore Freedom!" Don't support a candidate who isn't doing anything to unravel Bush's web.
Because combat and looting are the systems that really need the rules the most. I'd rather the DM make subjective calls in diplomacy than combat. Looting isn't so much rules as it is tables to generate loot on. That doesn't mean D&D should focus heavily on combat and really its up to how creative your DM is. It is a roleplaying game after all, the roleplaying is up to you. Its nice that they didn't make excessive rules for non-combat situations because it gives players more freedom and incentive to be creative than forcing them to be tied down to a few rules.