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D&D 4th Edition Details Released
Wired is reporting that some juicy details of Wizards of the Coast's new 4th edition for Dungeons and Dragons are being leaked on to the web from the D&D Experience in Arlington, VA this week. "Wizards of the Coast, the current custodians of the D&D universe, have been talking about the upcoming fourth edition of the game for months, but they've been fairly cagey about hard details, preferring to tell us more about how elves love footraces than how much damage a fireball does. They're running actual 4e games at D&D Experience, though, and thanks to people with scanners, you can too!"
I'm playing what amounts to a beta release of a pen and paper rpg... It's official. I will never get laid.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Even though AD&D was my first PnP experience, I've liked each release less after 2nd Ed. It seems at though every time they try to further the pigeon-holing of classes into certain roles, not unlike MMOs. This edition is no different, even going so far as to actually define these roles - controller, defender, leader, striker (CoH deja vu). As it is, it looks likes D&D is going to remain the system of choice of those who are more interested in flexing the system to make ungodly powerful characters, rather than interesting ones.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
D&D? Seriously? What are you, a bunch of geeks? Now, Hackmaster.. THERE's a game!
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
A few weeks ago I was at a mall in LA, eating in the food court. One of the stores nearby was a gaming and hobbyist shop, where they had Dungeons & Dragons paraphernalia displayed prominently in the window. A group of geeky-looking guys went in, and came out a few minutes later with a D&D set.
They sat down in the food court, and started playing. After about 20 minutes or so, a tribe of Latino gangsta scum came over and started taunting them for playing D&D in public. I only overheard a portion of what they were saying, and a lot of it was in horribly broken English that I couldn't figure out for the life of me, but I did hear phrases like "Dungeons & Faggots", and "cacho geek gringo".
I can understand not liking D&D. I've played it before, and didn't really enjoy it. But the pure hatred towards these players that I witnessed was something else. I found it actually pretty disturbing.
1. Cannot base characters off the Ash from the Evil Dead movies.
2. A one man band is not an appropriate bard instrument.
3. There is no Dwarven god of heavy artillery.
4. My 7th Sea character Boudreaux is not the 'Southern' Montaigne.
5. Not allowed to blow all my skill points on 1pt professional skills.
6. Synchronized panicking is not a proper battle plan.
7. Nor is "Kill them all and let God sort them out"
8. Not allowed to use psychic powers to do the dishes.
9. How to serve Dragons is not a cookbook.
10. My monk's lips must be in sync.
11. Just because my character and I can speak German, doesn't mean the GM can.
13. Not allowed to berserk for the hell of it, especially during royal masquerades.
13. Must learn at least one offensive or defensive spell if I'm the sorcerer.
14. Must not murder canon NPCs in their sleep, no matter how cliche they are.
15. Ogres are not kosher.
16. Plan B is not automatically twice as much explosives as Plan A.
17. I will not beat Tomb of Horrors in less than 10 minutes from memory.
18. Collateral Damage Man is not an appropriate name for a super hero.
19. When surrendering I am to hand the sword over HILT first.
20. Drow are not good eating.
21. Polka is not appropriate marching music.
22. No longer allowed to recreate the Death Star Trench Run out of genre.
23. There is no such thing as a Gnomish Pygmy War Rhino.
24. Any character who has a sensitivity training center named after him will be taken away.
25. Even if the rules allow it, I am not allowed to summon 50,000 Blue Whales.
26. The green elf does not need food badly.
27. Valley speak has no place in a fantasy setting. Especially if you're the paladin.
28. I am not to shoot every corpse in the head to make sure they aren't a zombie in Twilight 2000.
29. The Goddess' of Marriage chosen weapon is not the whip.
30. I cannot have any gun that requires me to continue the damage code on back.
31. I am not to kill off all the vampires in the LARP, even if they are terminally stupid.
32. The backup trap handler is not whoever has the most HP at the time.
33. I cannot buy any animal in groups of 100 or over.
34. There is no such skill as 'improvised cooking'
35. I am not allowed to base any Droid off any character played by Joe Pesci.
36. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to play R2 units.
37. I am not allowed to convince the entire party to sit on the same side of the table.
38. They do not make black market illegal cyberweapons for rodents.
39. When investigating evil cultists not allowed to just torch the decrepit mansion from the outside.
40. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'can lick their eyebrows'
41. Dwarves do not have the racial ability to hold their breath for 10 minutes.
42. Dwarves do not have the racial ability 'impromptu kickstand'
43. Having a big nose adds nothing to my seduction check.
44. No longer allowed to set nazi propaganda music to a snappy disco beat.
45. Not allowed to spend all 100 character points on 100 1pt skills.
46. My character names are not allowed to be double entendres.
47. Sliver rhymes with silver because the computer frelling says so.
48. They do not make Nair in wookie sizes.
49. The elf is restricted to decaf for the rest of the adventure.
50. Not allowed to blow up the Death Star before that snotty farm kid gets his shot.
51. Not allowed to use thermodynamic science to asphyxiate the orcs' cave instead of exploring it first.
52. No longer allowed to use the time machine for booty calls.
53. My bard does not know how to play Inna Godda Davida on marachas.
54. Not allowed to start a drow character weighing more than a quarter ton.
55. Cannot pimp out other party members.
56. Before facing the dragon, not allowed to glaze the elf.
57. No matter how well I roll, a squirrel cannot carry a horse and rider at full sprint.
58. In the middle of a black op I cannot ask a guard to validate parking.
59. Expended ammun
Maybe its my age showing, I dunno, but a good 10 - 15 years ago I too was a very enthousiast RPG player, the main interest lied in D&D. However, when looking back and looking at the 4th edition being launched I can't help wonder if this isn't a mere quest for more money and nothing else. Let me explain...
;)) and that was it. We all had our own dice but we also used to take turns when playing. SO when adding up you didn't really need much money to get the most fun out of the game. And this is what has always fascinated me about D&D, a very well setup game which didn't require tremendous amounts of cash.
/all/ about rules. But compared to D&D there was much more to gain in AD&D if you at least purchased a basic pack of books in order to know your basics. Was this really only about gaming or....
;-)
What I liked best about roleplaying was that you didn't really need much to have fun. You basically needed a good DM to setup a story and who was familiar with the rules, but that didn't have to cost much. When we started out a friend bought the D&D starters kit which had the basic rules, copied them for us and so began our quest. We didn't need much more; the DM setup the whole stories using using a notebook (the paper thing, not a laptop
And when the party grew and we wanted more I eventually stumbed upon the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (sorry for the commercial link but its the best I could find). And that was the beginning of the end for us; all of a sudden we had all the rules and every table you could possibly dream of in 1 big ass book. Even better; it even clearly explained how you could expand on the D&D universe to add enhancements of your own. In the end we ended up creating our own imaginary island on which we would live several nice adventures. In the end it wasn't about knowing all the rules or living it strictly as told. We cared about the role playing and the adventuring, nothing else.
It was also during that time when I got in contact with AD&D 2nd edition. What struck me as odd from the start were the tremendous amounts of books you required to setup a good game, or at least thats how it looked to me. Personally I got completely sucked into Dragonlance. Not so much on playing but reading the stories from Weiss and Hickman. I collected the whole Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends and also many paperbacks with 3rd party stories. Some of those were quite amazing. However, then it suddenly struck me that the whole thing was aimed at a very particular crowd and many stories all centred about a common goal: stopping Takhisis from performing her evil deeds. And all guided by several (many) very strict rules and hints and tips.
And after checking out dozens of AD&D 2nd edition rule books (not specifically aimed at Dragonlance) I couldn't help wonder about one very simple and basic idea: "Where is the roleplaying in all this?". To me it felt like the whole "RPG experience" was picked up and used to describe a whole different thing. Sure, you had your roleplaying and it wasn't
Well, its a trend I saw happening throughout the scene. The Dragonlance books I so adored were illustrated mainly by Larry Elmore. An artist who's work I really admired. Its only natural that I bought some of his artbooks ("The art of Dragonlance") which I really enjoyed. But, picture my surprise when I noticed that after a few years (5 or so) they suddenly changed the pictures on the covers. The Elmore pictures were gone and replaced by other stuff. Even the whole TSR logo and approach was different. And it was then and there where I saw that things turned more mainstream (in my experience at least).
Next you had AD&D 3rd edition (not too long ago iirc, I could be mistaken) and now the next rules have leaked out. And then, to finish up this long story, I cannot help ask myself: "What happened to creating your own story based on existing rules using nothign more but some pieces of paper and your dice". But like I said; it must be my age showing
Oh, man...I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Maybe the subject is a bit rude, but I cannot like D&D any more. It is getting more and more cumbersome and unrealistic, it more of a math problem than a simple canvas on which to build with your fantasy.
It have been a few years now, since I last did some role playing with my friend, in the last period we had much more fun using a simple set of rules we had developed ourselves than any boxed set
D&D is especially bad as it started as a simple set of rules, with some original points and, and than evolved to gigantic, while keeping it's original inconsistencies and awkward mechanics.
Anyway I don't I will have much time to play it again until I retire, and it will take, well.. about 40 years
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
I'm looking at the back of that specific Tiefling Wizard's sheet, and it seems to me that conversion is going right out the window. This 1st level character seems pretty beefy to me, in terms of sheer spell face-meltage. Does 'At-Will' really mean "as much as you want, just so long as it is your turn"?
Likewise it seems the Fighter gets to throw a 3d10+5 blow once per day. Yes, I typed that right. 8-35 damage, once daily, renews if you miss - AT LEVEL ONE?
If so, wow. Just wow.
The scary thing is we're talking second generation virgins now.
(There's a reason why AD&D 1st edition had measurements in inches, and everything was described as "rounds" and "turns")
Give me my red and blue rule books and I'll be off to the Keep on the Borderlands or the Isle of Dread. If I have some time, on the way I'll stop by the Palace of the Silver Princess.
Sure, the later books filled in a lot of missing material, but the basic and expert sets covered what you needed to start playing and having fun. (I also liked the first edition of AD&D.) If I'm playing a game I don't want to be bogged down in so many details and minutia that I stop having fun. Do I really need to worry about having a sewing kit? I battle orc hordes and packs of bugbears - why should I worry about having spare tabards in my backpack so I look nice for the victory feast?
Now, a lot of that can be fixed by a good DM, but many start considering the details once they see them in the book. It never would have entered their mind that you need to keep a sewing kit - except that it's in the equipment list, so you should have bought one if you wanted one. Keep things simple. Keep them fun. If I wanted to handle all of the historical details, I'd join a civil war reenactment group. If I wanted to handle all of the details - I'd worry about doing laundry in real life. If I want to role play - I'll start living a second life. With all the new rulebooks, and their inflated prices, it's cheaper to live a double life.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Actually, it was the various settings that I think were the nail in the coffin for TSR... because not everybody in their market niche would be interested in buying every single campaign setting, they ended up fragmenting their audience to below sustainable thresholds. But it's not Planescape's fault, I still think that was the best campaign setting TSR ever came out with. Long before planescape came along, however, TSR was already in serious trouble.
When 2nd edition came out, had TSR instead of focusing on campaign settings, instead focused development on adventure modules that are enjoyable and good for one-off adventures that could be played in just a few hours, they really could have kept the gravy train going and probably never been in so much trouble that WotC was able to buy them out. The way this could work (and actually *did* work in the early first edition days when Gygax was still running things) is that people who had not necessarily played before could easily be invited to such a one-off session, where they could try the game with no major commitments and if they liked it, they could easily turn around and go buy their own books (the latter, of course, being where the most profit was, and an easy mechanism for bringing newcomers into the game ensured a continually growing market segment).
All that said, I'm sticking with first edition. The reason being is that the ruleset is the most manageable... There were less than a dozen rulebooks in total for first edition, and materials are pretty easy to come by cheaply on ebay.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Torg, Gurps, Skyrealms of Jorune, Exalted, Runequest, Milleniums End, Harnmaster, Palladium, Everway, etc. ... there are *tons* of RPGs out there that are cheaper, more in-depth, have better material, are more flexible, easyer to understand and better to handle than D&D.
To make an analogy to the IT world: I see D&D something like the SQL of RPGs. It's ancient, unwieldy, expensive, slow, unneccessary and really crappy by modern standards but for the reason of some undiscovered infinetly raging mass-psychosis people think of it as the prime example in it's field.
If you're planning on getting into RPG (again) please *do* check out the alternatives of which I listed some above. They deserve to be considered as a RPG gaming system.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
There's a glowing playtest review of the game on Ain't It Cool News. Part One, Part Two. Part Three should be posted some time today.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
While I won't go as far as hating a company which is trying to make more money, I see where you are right. WoTC has changed the D&D way. It used to be about one off adventures, a minimal rulebook environement and a large amount of leeway for the DM.
./er pointed out. The features will be there, but it looks to me that a great deal of its design is around "how to make more money from our player base", rather then "how do we make a better game?"
Things have changed of course. D&D has grown into the largest system, encompassing many settings with a user base so large they feel they can milk it for profit indefinitely. At the same time, WoW is the hot new thing, a competitor to D&D like none before. Sales of the core books are probably slipping at this point and the 3.5 is unstable, so it's the perfect time to make a new edition.
However, it seems to me that this edition is likely the Vista of D&D as another
Oh, and a blind friend of mine discounted the whole 4Th edition when I told him about the visual, computer based enhancements. I just don't see WoTC going out of their way to make a blind friendly online system.
Karma:This parrot is dead! (and so is the joke.)