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D&D Fourth Edition Books To Be Released in June
Bill Slavicsek, R&D director on Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, has announced via his personal column that the three core books for Fourth Edition will all be coming out in the same month. When the new game version was announced at Gen Con this year, the initial idea was that the books would be staggered over a three month period. "After conferring with our various trade partners, the Sales Team here at Wizards came back with word that they'd rather have the three core rulebooks release in the same month than over three consecutive months. As that's how we originally wanted to release them, Brand and R&D got together with our Production Team to see if we could accommodate the request. The answer is YES! The new release schedule looks like this: May: H1: Keep on the Shadowfell 4th Edition D&D adventure with Quick-Start Rules. June 6: 4th Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual." As a note, the article is trapped behind an inane login for the Dungeons and Dragons Insider site. Hey WotC? It's really hard to talk up your new toys when you make it hard to read your content. Why not loosen up a bit?
D&D 1st and 2nd edition were both on the market for decades. Then Wizards of the Coast purchases D&D and all of a sudden a new edition is coming out every few years. They are just trying to make people buy tons of their printed material, which is exactly what their business model was with Magic the Gathering.
Yay for printed material that becomes obsolete every few years. Can't wait for D&D 5th Edition, coming next Christmas.
I used to play D&D, and loved it. However, over the years I was turned off by all the expansion books that were available for each race, class, worlds. If I was going to get back into D&D, I would restrict myself to the core three books, PM, DMG, and MM. D&D was always about the story telling ability of the DM anyhow, Min/Maxing just took from the game.
I have been a long time player. But it is rare me and the old crew will get together and play. And when we do end up getting together, it is usually a one off thing where we only play the same characters for a short time. I always felt the core books did not really address casual gamers in a way that would enhance the fun factor.
The issue as I see it, relates to choices. I noticed that people like to play mages because there is a perception that magic can do neat an interesting things, and a beginning player can spend time thinking about various choices of spells they can get. Whereas, the other classes seem to be more focused on just increasing a stat such as to hit something, or do more damage in a particular situation.
Well, one of the benefits of role playing is adjusting the rules to suit a particular style. I just wish they incorporated more interesting choices for low levels, or even an optional playing style.
From the few comments and reviews I have read, it appears that they are spending more time incorporating ideas from MMORPG, such as having tanks that draw aggro, and talent points to customize each class. It will be interesting to see how these work to give a player more choices in making a character. I have my doubts. It is not as though MMORPG are a great bastion of role playing. Seems most people just want points, powers, and trinkets.
...is releasing now!
Read: "We realized that plan was completely insane."
...but, Slashdot editors! Hello?! "D&D Fourth Edition Books All Releasing in June"? No.
No.
No.
"D&D Fourth Edition Books To Be Released in June"? Yes.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20071019&authentic=true
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dramp/20071019&authentic=true&pf=true
Enjoy.
Care about privacy? Read this!
I think most of my future roleplaying will be with the Mythic system from Word Mill Games, rather than D20 or D&D4th. The "Game Master Emulator" can provide for some interesting adventures, whether playing with a GM or without (yes... multi player roleplaying without a GM! It actually works.)
D&D has too much focus on tactical combat and encourages dice-festing. Maybe Mike Mearls can turn it around - I liked some of his work in Iron Heroes - but if a player has to have an intricate knowledge of the rules AND spend an hour making a first level character to play 4th edition, then I can't see myself spending money on it. Last game I ran, involving 5 players, 3 had no knowledge of the rules, and it took us 3 hours to make characters.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
...and am hoping that they finally get the balance right.
;-)
I'm currently using the 3.5 rules as a basis for a LARP system (started last month, and running a one-day event once every month) in London, UK. It's somewhat strange taking the complexity of D&D and trying to make it work in the simplicity of LARP... Or at least the way I'm trying to keep the LARP system simple
For anyone who doesn't know - LARP = Live Action Role-Play. We go out and hit each other with latex weapons and do everything that tabletop gamers do, just in person... And with less explosions...
Robin
I more or less quit playing AD&D around 1997 or so, and didn't play any sort of D&D until about 2 years ago. By then AD&D was gone and v3.5 was out. So in the past 2 years I've spent around $600 or $700 on v3.5 (and a little bit of v3.0) books and stuff. So my question is: Is v4.0 so different that it totally obsoletes v3.5 materials? If so, I damn sure won't be "upgrading" anytime soon. If this is the case, they've actually cost themselves business from me, as I would happily keep buying new v3.5 supplements, but no way am I replacing several hundred dollars worth of existing materials...
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Attract more buyers of the books (if not more players).
It's probably painful to you who enjoyed 2nd and 3rd edition rules, but they are not comparable to 1ed rules, or even to the original paperback books of the 1970s. Back then, and if you read early issues of the Dragon you can feel this, there was intense interest in applying human imagination to the gameplay. The GM was encouraged by the rules to make up expedients to arbitrate particular situations, and to write their own adventures. The concept of a 'module' was invented largely as a cash flow device by the management of TSR.
2ed and 3ed are a lot of hand holding and substituting hard and fast rules for what used to be the domain of the GM/DM to decide. Associated with this is an increase in game complexity (which produces more books!). The game suffered, frankly, and it's no wonder that it attracts fewer rather than more players as time goes on.
This 4ed release (explain to me who exactly is 'excited' about this, according to TFA?) unquestionably will hasten the process with inclusion of crappy MMORPG concepts, if the other posters here are right. Aggro? Please.
Find some circa 1ed material, GM it as the rulebooks will suggest (they are small by today's standards) and see if it isn't a better game when reduced to its basics.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I used to be into gaming, I was right there at stage 1, complete with the puny little dice you had to colour in with the crayons that came in the first box. I graduated to AD&D and bought all the books printed by TSR and the *exalted* Gary Gygax. Complete with the the first edition 'No we didn't ask for permission, why are you suing us?' version of Deities and Demigods. I even have a box of painted lead guys I have to keep on a top shelf so my son won't get at them and eat them. (funny how they ban toys for having a bit of lead paint now but they used to *sell* us whole little lead guys to play with)...I remember being bored and twirling dice... Painstakingly setting up almost a hundred little separately bought lead guys for a battle and having the cat jump on the table and wreak havok.. *SAVE VS GIANT CAT!! MINUS 12 DAMAGES AIEEEE!!* oh yes, our DM was merciless.. if the cat reached up and knocked your little lead guy off the table you were done for. You sometimes had to hire an npc to run around the dungeon with 50 ft of rope just to keep it off your party's tail.
I was considered a weirdo, being a GIRL, they even made me roll vs pregnancy in the first few games I played, like my character could catch it from walking around in dungeons, but what did they know, they were adolescent boys.
We grew tired of the system mechanics TSR employed and adopted our own percentile system loosely based on twilight 2000 early on in the 'old school' days, and based our own worlds on it.
We had brief spells of Shadowrun, more book buying, more dissatisfaction with the limitations of the system, more making up our own rules loosely based on the best of the different hand picked ones we had grabbed from different books,. Then TSR fumbled and the guys at Wizards of the Coast picked up the ball, and the D20 system lured us back. More book buying, more dissatisfaction on learning the limitations of the system.... are we seeing the trend here? I am assuming a lot more people had the same experiences, and put a lot of money into the coffers of TSR/wizards/etc. trying to find their 'ideal' gaming system.
But enough about me, on to the theory:
My Gaming friends and I came up with this inverse theory of relativity:
The percentage of gaming books you own is inversely relative to the amount of dates you go out on. regardless of gender.
I still game occasionally, but I make do with the rules we have tuned over the years knowing now that they are going to be better than any the guys on the corporate side are shelling for 50 bux a pop.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
Heh.
The 1st Ed AD&D still has a place in my heart. I haven't played a real table-top game in decades but if I ever do, I'll just use my 1st Ed books. I have a hunch I'm not the only one who feels like this. If you don't have the old rulebooks anymore, you can buy them from Paizo or download OSRIC (Old School Reference & Index Compilation, a project aiming to provide a copyright-free version of early editions of Dungeons and Dragons). I still might get 4E at any rate, just for the heck of it and see how the game has evolved.
I've been playing DnD since '81. I think 1st Ed. sucks. Basic was fun when I was still learning simple math and my brother handled all that for me. I really liked 2nd Ed. I played it for years. I am playing in a 1st edition game right now and I can say after playing in this game for a few years, I see that 1st Ed and 2nd Ed are almost the same damn rules by the core books. That said, I think 1st Ed sucks because we play it very differently than we played 2nd Ed. back in the day. Of course, seeing the similarities in the books, I now see the differences are really between the house rules in each. I've been running a 3.5 game for a few years and as much as 3rd Ed./3.5 rules get to be a pain in the butt, I like it a hell of a lot better than 1st. And of course, I have just as many house rules as we do in the 1st Ed. game in which I play.
You bitch about DnD attracting fewer people over the years and base that complaint on how 2nd/3rd editions have become more complex and have more books, and blah blah blah. I can tell you, my biggest turn off to the game is rants like the one you've posted. I have as much fun playing 3.5 as I ever have Basic, 1st, 2nd, and 3.0. I have never played the 1974 rules so I have no opinion on them. But, when I look at a game to see if I want to play, if the game is using 1st Ed. rules, I am far less likely to play in it than if it were running any of the other rule sets.
You also complain about DM decisions being replaced by hard and fast rules. This is not the case. As mentioned above, I house rule just as much in my 3.5 game as my buddy does in his 1st Ed. game. No matter how you look at it, it's a game and it's meant to be fun. You are always free to and encouraged to house rule things for the fun factor/realism/whatever floats your boat, regardless of edition. This will hold true in 4th edition as well.
GM the game as the 1st Ed. rules suggest? It will be more fun?! Are you high? A combat round lasts one minute? A trained and experienced fighter (15th level for instance) gets two chances in an entire minute of combat to hit someone with a sword?! Of course, while this is going on, the 1st level magic-user gets 3 chances in the same time period to hit someone with save-or-die poisoned darts?! That's pure stupidity! The rules in 1st Ed are just as wonky and in need of changing as the rules in other editions. I don't care about the strategy wargaming history behind the development of 1st Ed. rules. This is not a strategy mini wargame. This is one-on-one combat and the rules translations are incomplete in 1st and 2nd Ed.
It sounds like you're on a very common rant which is really all about not liking change or maybe more about liking the 'original'. Original in this case is the first version you played, not the true 'original'. While it's OK to dislike change and voice your opinion about it, stop disguising it and just call it what it is. You've got a hard on for retro DnD. That's cool. I have the same for computing as seen by reading my handle. But give it a rest already. Let people have their fun without someone like you trying to troll them.
I started in on D&D when I was 13. The game was clumsy, the rules were aggravating, and the stories were never about anything I was interested in. And yet there was something there... something wonderful and fun. Unfortunately it always seemed just out of reach. It was like listening to great music with the volume turned down so you can barely hear it; nice music, but elusive and frustrating as well.
Way too many game books, a couple system shifts into FASA, White Wolf and other game companies, and nearly a couple decades later I finally found that something I had always been missing in games. I've been having a blast playing since. The volume's been cranked way up.
I'm not really interested in tactics and cool powers and advancing in skills and such. What I am interested in is cool stories. I like to get together with people and put together a collaborative story. So now I buy games that help me do that.
Most of these games are single book games. One book, and that's it. No unending stream of supplements, just a good game that's fun to play. These games aren't ones that you have to tweak the rules for constantly either, with everyone playing the rules a different way. These games haven't just been thrown together. They're play tested hard, and they do what they're supposed to do. The rules work. These games are usually very accessible to casual gamers as well as outsiders to RPGs.
The latest game I picked up like this is Dirty Secrets. It's a game of the hardboiled detective genre. You play an investigator and solve crimes. The location? Your home town. The time? Last week. And there's crime and murder in the air. It's a one shot story game, taking approximately 3-9 hours, depending on the type of game you pick (short story, novella, novel). Much more fun than Monopoly or Risk that many might play instead. High replay value too, since of course every story would be different.
Sorcerer is another one I like. I've been running this game weekly for the past year. We're almost done with the first campaign, and it's been a blast. Arrogant mortals taming the dark powers and creatures from beyond our reality and forcing them to their will? Faustian deals gone awry? If you ever wanted to play a character like John Constatine, this is the game for it.
Dogs in the Vineyard makes a great old west game. Personally I don't care for the setting, but the game system is fantastic. It works well in certain other settings as well, so that is what I use it for. For the old west style standoff, I've yet to see a better system.
Love great TV, and always wanted to do a series? This game structures your stories as if they are TV episodes in a series. SF, fantasy, western, crime drama, spy drama... all are possible. The game system does really well at modeling what's important to a TV series, and resolving the problems that result for the conflicts you introduce. Shows like Firefly, Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Heroes, and the new Battlestar Gallactica are all good examples of the type of shows this game models well.
If you want a Tolkien-esque FRPG, and like a good bit of rules crunch in your games, I would suggest you try out Burning Wheel instead of D&D. It has a great story based character creation, not just number crunching with maybe adding on some story as a side note.
If you instead want a game focusing on combat tactics and advancement of powers, and where story control is in the hands of one player while the other players are along for the ride (if there is even a story there at all), then this new D&D might be for you. It's not a bad game, it's just not suitable for all types of gamers.
ze game will remain ze same. ze game will remain ze same!
>The percentage of gaming books you own is inversely relative to the amount of dates you go out on.
Interesting story, I met a girl playing Diplomacy (board game) at a gaming conference. She wanted to come over and show me the RPG Vampires.
We didn't even open the book.
Then she moved (lol).
But anyway, RPGer meets RPGer and no RPGs were played.
Shadowrun was college...all dudes. AD&D in middle school, well, we worshipped it and made a complete mess of it at the same time.
When 3rd edition came out, a huge change went in that made D&D more like a video game than a roleplaying system. The idea of boosting stats and such, or picking up a level of some other class when you are ready to advance really feels too much like something from a very weak console game where the players have such a short attention span that they MUST get obvious "power-ups" regularly and often.
A big part of the problem is letting players see their stats. Honestly, let the player decide what class he/she wants, and let the DM create the character based on the rules. Let it be random, but make the player really be clueless about their exact stats. If there will be a system to increase stats, or level up in another class, or pick up non-class skills, make the player say it in advance, and make it obvious that the character is now being judged by their actions toward the desired increase. Or make the different class abilities be skill based, and make it so the system is a skill-based system where people need to use a skill to advance in that skill(training will take care of a lot of this).
If a player doesn't know what the character stats are, then all that matters is the fun of playing through whatever stories the DM runs them through. Letting the player know roughly how much health the character has means more than saying just how many hit points the character has as well. If someone plays an arcane caster and charges in to fight in melee, and then dies because the character only has six hit points, that just isn't playing the character properly, so why encourage playing the game system rather than playing the game?
You ever go to a Con and play a tournament roleplaying game? I challenge anyone of either sex to stand up at the end of one of those rooms and pick a single person in the room and say "hey, now *there's* a hot catch I'd like to spend the evening and a warm can of cocoa butter with!" without any alcohol.... ;)
I rest my case. *grin*
m&m
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
I got invited to one group to play. Done over the internet, with skype, and about 2 hours ago I gave up on keeping the map, the stupid phone call has been going on for 8 hours, we have done 10 minutes of play the rest has been mapping the stupid dungon, I am looking forward to my character's death.