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A Veteran GM's First Impressions of D&D 4th Edition
Martin Ralya writes "I spent several hours with the three core D&D 4th Edition books on launch day, and wrote a detailed look at all of them based on my first impressions. Two big takeaways: Yes, the World of Warcraft comparisons are fair (and a good thing), and the way character powers work now will make the game more fun for everyone."
It seems a bit funny to me that they are making it WoW-like in the "everybody can play easily" quality. I never liked that about WoW, because it just meant that a bunch of idiots could sign on and play, but in a tabletop game it will just make it easier for friends who thought it was too complicated before to get into it. Hearing this about it makes me happy.
There's no other explanation for a review this positive to:
a) exist
b) get a slashdot front page story
The 4e books have about 1/4 the content of previous edition books. They have large type, a lot of whitespace, and hell of a lot of repetition and iteration through trivial variants.
Every new power or creature has an embarassingly bad "Magic: The Gathering" style name, which often has only a slight connection to the game mechanic it represents. Many of the powers have rules that only make sense in combat, and the ones that are designed to be done outside of combat are slapdash.
It's all designed around "game balance" (i.e. balance as a competitive tactics boardgame, not as a cooperative role-playing game) to the point of continual absurdity.
I could go on and on, but there is a lot to hate in 4e, and anyone who gives it an entirely uncritical review is either taking money or ignorant of previous editions.
Each system has its own flavor of system and setting, and quirks as well. It's possible to like some and hate others, like them all, or be cold on all.
Some may like Rolemaster (and/or SpaceMaster), but others may find its reliance on entire books of tables somewhat daunting. Likewise, Runequest has a very loyal following, although the latest incarnation from Mongoose Publishing just kind of lies there; they focused a little too much on system and not enough on the setting that had been assembled over the course of a decade or two. (Incidentally, I consider HeroQuest to be a worthy spiritual successor to Chaosium's Runequest, moreso than Mongoose's.) D&D has certain strengths over both of them
There's no reason you can't appreciate each system for what it is.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
The 4e books have about 1/4 the content of previous edition books. They have large type, a lot of whitespace, and hell of a lot of repetition and iteration through trivial variants.
Every new power or creature has an embarassingly bad "Magic: The Gathering" style name, which often has only a slight connection to the game mechanic it represents. Many of the powers have rules that only make sense in combat, and the ones that are designed to be done outside of combat are slapdash.
It's all designed around "game balance" (i.e. balance as a competitive tactics boardgame, not as a cooperative role-playing game) to the point of continual absurdity.
I could go on and on, but there is a lot to hate in 4e, and anyone who gives it an entirely uncritical review is either taking money or ignorant of previous editions.
Fantasy-oriented computer games started out by trying to imitate games like D&D, and now D&D is trying to imitate them.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Two things I find funny about D&D 4E in comparison to GURPS 4e (my generally-preferred system). Remember when GURPS 4e came out? Everyone whined it was too expensive. Now D&D 4E is over $100 for the PHB/DMG/MM basic set (no pun intended), though of course you can find it online for cheaper. Yet no one seems to be complaining.
On the upside, many of the things that GURPS 4e did right D&D 4E is also doing right. Much improved rules layout and general unification/simplification of "stupid things". I was very much not a fan of d20 3.x for this exact reason; the entire ruleset was vomited into the book with what seemed like little attention to organization. (Remember GURPS 3e sidebars?)
That said, D&D 4E is very much still the quick hack'n'slash ruleset. Of course, it doesn't have to be, but it certainly doesn't have the attention to character personality advantages/disadvantages and all the non-combat skills that GURPS does. But then not much else does, and that's why we all love GURPS, isn't it. ;-)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The fact that the 'veteran DM' only dated back to AD&D2.0 and his review read like it was written by a dim witted cheerleader made it useless to most readers.
I'd debated buying all the 4.0 books to read through and develop an educated opinion....but most of the reviews I've read so far (particularly those written by fanbois) has totally turned me off of this edition. Maybe there will be a gameshop running a demo that I can watch and get an actual experience without having to spend a few duckets.
Spells are called "powers" (goodbye psionics?) and are detailed in the class section; there is no other"magic" area in the book. Great for a person only playing a wizard, ever, but wtf for people making classes. Horrible.
Psionics will be in the PHB2. If you're making your own class, you can either steal the wizard's power list (which is what everybody did in 3rd ed) or make your own. No problems there, that's exactly how it's always been -- the only difference is that the wizard's abilities are listed with him rather than in their own chapter.
- No confirm criticals, criticals are just max damage on a 20. Goodbye dramatic tension as you bunch over the faded die, figuring out if you got a 7 or 17 on that confirm roll. Goodbye variability. Goodbye fight-ending strike.
I'm really sorry if the most exciting part of your game is trying to figure out whether you rolled a 7 or 17. Also, you might be interested to know that this was something that was new in 3rd ed, anyway.
- Most rolls 1d20+1/2 character level+other. Wow, that means that high level people will be able to do everything better than 1st level players! Horrible.
- No ranks in skills. So much for making a detailed and unique character, huh? Cookie-cutter it is then.
High level characters are already capable of doing everything better than low-level characters, if they put their minds to it. Also, proficiency and skill focus still factor into your die rolls, so it'll take a very significant difference in levels before a high-level character who focuses on a skill will be able to easily beat a low-level character who focuses on it. Besides, since when have skill ranks made anybody unique? Unless you were intentionally crippling yourself for roleplaying flavor, every class basically had a few skills that they'd keep maxed out and never put points in any others. Dropping skill ranks and making rolls 1d20 + 1/2 level + other effectively produces the same results and eliminates one of the most tedious parts of writing up the stats for a new character.
- Attackers roll saves instead of defenders. Stupid. It takes the fate out of your hands and into mine, not to mention I have to look up the bonus a cliff gets to its reflex attack. wtf?
All they're doing is making things consistent. In 3rd ed, when you make a melee attack, you roll, add your attack bonus, and if you beat the opponent's AC, you hit them. When you made a magical attack, though, the DM got to roll, add the attack bonus (the monster's save), and compare it to the target AC (your save DC). Now it works exactly the same way for spells, too; the attacker is in control of the "fate" of their attacks.
- No strategy. Instead of having to rest and pray (or study) to gain spells back, they have the equivalent of "cooldown" (which I can forgive in an MMO, but makes no real-world sense). Basically your players can use their best spells every fight. No strategy, no need for lower-level spells at all. Why do they even exist once you pass 5th level (or whatever level it is you get fireball now)?
This is so completely wrong that I won't even bother, other than saying that you need to read the book.
-"There are fewer types of action, standard, move, minor and free." Given that that's about the same as 3.5 core (full-round, standard, move and free), I wonder about this guy's mental health exclaiming its virtues.
3rd ed had full round, standard, move, free, swift, and immediate actions. Further complicating things was the fact that you had to combine your standard and move for a full round, and you could trade your standard down for a move action, but couldn't trade anything down for a swift action. 4e removed the full round action and renam
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( ) 1) winner of the internets
( ) 2) respected and loved
( ) 3) appear intelligent
(X) 4) an ass
(X) 5) an even bigger dork than the OP
While he was arguing against the fanboy aspect of the article, almost all his points are about how ridiculous he thinks 4th edition is.
As for D&D 4th, not to point anyone in the direction of anything illegal, but there might have been a leak of the books you can peruse. Personally, I think it was intentional, as people will be able to read over the books online this way, and then they will be more likely to buy the books (and their friends...) when they see what it's really all about.
I'm no 4th edition fanboy, but I find the system to be very enjoyable - a breath of fresh air, if you will. Just be prepared for some major differences - it is far and away NOT 3.5. It's a "re-envisioning" of D&D. I find many people are already disliking it because they wanted a slight update to the D&D they know, not a full new game. In a few aspects (nothing concrete, this is just a "feeling" for me) it seems to hearken back to 2E.
Thats called growing up. Kudos to anyone who still has their friends around to play DnD but most people just dont. Not many people have a group of friends around where they can meet up all at the same time anymore. I still hang out with my old friends but usually not at the same time of day anymore.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
How is this ironic? This manner of interchange of ideas is only natural.
Mozart and Haydn found much inspiration in each others' work. I fail to see irony here.
Some friends of mine were running one of the D&D game days going on today to introduce 4th edition. Due to some unforeseen circumstances I wasn't able to make it in time to play, so when I did show up about an hour later I decided to just hang out and watch.
What really surprised me and I totally did not expect from anything I'd heard about 4E is how much longer combats took to resolve. A little bit of that was clearly, okay, here are people are familiar with 3E and can play 3E fast and this is new so it takes longer, but... more, the amount of hit points everyone has have gone up a lot, the access to healing that everyone has has gone up a lot, characters can heal while doing other things, damage hasn't gone up a lot, and spells and powers that can really turn the momentum of a fight (e.g., 3E slow vs. creatures with a large number of weak attacks) have pretty much gone away.
The D&D game day module was for pregenerated first level characters. In all earlier editions of the game, combat for first level characters will go pretty damn fast. No one has the hit points to take much of a beating, and maybe your cleric has 3 cure spells to throw around. In 4E, everyone at the table is getting healing surges for hit points back all over the place. No joke, in the middle of one combat I left to get some dinner and decided to have a sit-down meal at a restaurant about 15 minutes away. I got back around an hour and a half later and the same combat was still going and no end was in sight. In previous editions that would never, ever, happen with first level characters.
Maybe I'll come around to thinking that's a good thing, but personally, I enjoyed the way 1-3E played at low levels, and the way they played at mid levels, and the ways in which those were different. (If 4E actually did successfully fix how much the game broke down at high levels, I may be able to make peace with this.)
That's one of the things that bothers me most about D&D. My favorite characters in Gurps have been because of their disadvantages, something that D&D doesn't have. Healers can be honest-to-goodness healers instead of (arguably) the most powerful fighting character in the game. My fighting character can be ridiculously bad at poetry but always showing it to people. Little touches like that turn the game into a true story instead of an abstract FPS.
Also, the article spells out the combat-oriented nature of D&D, then the writer pretty much says straight up that he's never encountered non-combat situations. I understand there are players and GMs like that, but those aren't the games that I play. Whatever happened to awarding experience/character points for resolving the situation without pulling out your sword (literal or metaphorical)?
It sounds like D&D becoming even more pidgeon-holed into its niche without incorporating the things other games do better. Please, wizards, play a few Gurps campaigns (at least one of which with a pacifist), read a few palladium books, and incorporate what they do well into your products!
Disclaimer: at least 50% of my games are D&D, and I'm currently DM-ing a D&D game. This isn't coming from someone who hates the system, this is coming from someone who wishes the system weren't all about combat.
I've never played D&D, so forgive my ignorance...
But I just don't understand all the hoopla over the 4e rule changes. What's the big deal? If someone doesn't like a new rule, can't they just ignore it or use an old 3.5 rule?
Again, I've never played, but as far as I can tell, D&D is about getting together with your friends, having a good time, and taking part in an adventure in compelling setting. It's your game, so use the rules/classes/monster/etc. that you want.
"Simpler" stuff like: varying XP tables by class with; saving throw charts that didn't follow a simple arithmetic progression; hosts of magical spells to choose from; spell memorization and related spell slot management to contend with; totally random variance in spell ranges, areas of effect, and duration; simple character generation and hit point generation rules that boiled down to "invent your own more fair rules or else just pray you don't end up with a first level Fighter with 1 hit point"; a thieving skill progression chart that likewise didn't follow a fixed, intuitive progression; magic resistance that gave a flat chance to negate incoming spells regardless of whether the spellcaster was level 1 or 36; level drain from undead that meant you had to re-write half your character sheet if your PC got hit a few times.
And of course, you were also much more limited in character and monster options unless your DM made his own rules. Want your Fighter to learn magic? Tough. Want an Orc that's also a thief? Too bad.
I agree that newer editions are painfully complex. But I can't return to original Dungeons and Dragons either - it's simpler than the newer stuff, but even it has a ton of odd and unnecessary complexities and some limits that are very frustrating.
There are many less popular RPGs that learned from older standards like Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, and Vampire: the Masquerade and ended up being simpler, more intuitive, and just as fun.
Well, personally, I don't think Evil Steve sees a lot of hope for GURPS as a line and think that taking the time to invest in forwarding it might be refurbishing a sinking ship. I think he'd rather focus on the next Munchkin or Chez Geek/Greek/Punk/Goth. Maybe relaunch Car Wars. Again.
Back in the 3e salad days, there was a new GURPS suppliment released each month (leading some to remark, not entirely inaccurately that GURPS was less a game and more a gaming magazine.) 4th edition saw that brought down to a suppliment a quarter. (And a few PDF suppliments. Not that they don't count, but... they don't count.)
There has not yet been a print release for any new GURPS 4th edition product in the entire year of 2008 so far. The next product in the queue is GURPS Thaumaturgy.
Munchkin is on it's 6th expansion of the -core- rules which does not include all if it's spinoffs (Star Munchkin, Munchkin Bites, Munchkin Cthulu, Munchkin Fu, Super Munchkin, Munchkin Impossible, The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin, etc.)
I'm not saying that GURPS will be unsupported, but it is Munchkin, not GURPS that pays the bills - GURPS is the labour of love.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Bad move, yes... uncommon move? No.
Why is it a bad move? They would have to decide whether reaching another 6% of the audience is worth however much they'd have to spend porting their product. I would wager that they realised that it would cost far more to make it available for Mac and Linux than they'd ever get in sales.
Sounds like a pretty good move, to me.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I think that you either misunderstand the concept behind a virtual tabletop, or you've not played Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights is more like being able to create your own D&D based computer role playing game. A virtual tabletop is more like having a map that you can put minis on, move them around, and play D&D like you would at the table.
As an aside, I'm not sure I agree with your statement that Neverwinter Nights never caught on... There are thousands of adventures available for it, more persistent worlds than you can shake a stick at, and at it's peak of popularity had as many people playing it online at most times as most MMOs. It sold 2 million copies, so I imagine neither Bioware nor Atari were at all disappointed nor would they say it didn't catch on.
It's a bad move for a number of reasons. The first is the demographic they are targeting. Whilst Windows has a very high share of the market, that's taking into account business use as well as the trends of the overall population. I would say that the young and generally better than averagely educated demographic that make up D&D players is going to have a much greater proportion of Linux and Mac users. Secondly, it is a group activity, so whilst 4 out of 5 potential customers might be Windows users, it is still a big problem if one or two members of a group are not. When you need everyone in a group to be a Windows user, then suddenly that four out of five statistic looks like a serious issue. Thirdly is long term planning. Windows isn't going away in this year, but uptake of rival OS's is rising and this is especially the case in the home market where people can do what they like. Windows will hold on very well in the business world for quite some time, but that's again not the market WotC are after. They really have to think about the future here. Fourthly is the assumption that you make about the cost of porting their product to other OS's. If they had planned for this from the start they could have (a) taken a cross-platform approach (does DirectX 10 really offer that irresistable advantage to an application that moves static 3d figures around a board?) and (b) looked at a more web-based approach to their offering which would be better in any case. If they had set out to create a cross-platform solution they would have found the additional cost was not so great and certainly worth their while in terms of return.
I suspect WotC management were victims of listening to one individual with one way of doing things. It's all too easy to hire someone, even a very senior person, and have them tell you it should be done in way X and not know any better. It's a shame they didn't consult me, eh?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Or did your DnD campaigns really involve grinding for 60 levels, then raiding the same dungeon -- and killing the same villain! -- possibly hundreds of times, in order to collect a full set of epic gear?
Current estimates of overall Windows market share range from 91% to 96%, but that includes a heck of a lot of computers that are not owned by D&D players.
You realize that the link you provided says that non-Windows OS's take up 8.87% of the market, right? Not 6%? Windows' market share has dropped over 2% in the last year, which is honestly pretty significant.
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I argue the opposite. GURPS players only take character weaknesses for a mechanical advantage, whereas Dungeons and Dragons players that take addictions, phobias, codes of conduct, or hobbies for their PCs are doing it strictly for roleplaying reasons.
To my mind, the latter is superior to the former from the angle of interesting storytelling.
I'm guessing the parent is right. DnD is the domain of nerds, as is alternative OSs. By marketing to the mainstream demographic, they forget that their product isn't mainstream, by any stretch. A higher percentage of DnD players will be using Linux or OS X than the average population, its rather hard to argue against this. If the new iteration of /. was IE only, would you be okay with that, since most people in the general population use IE? Or would you be mindful that most nerds use something else?
The mainstream isn't useful when your dealing with small specialty groups.
Though I'm guessing that the truly nerdy will just continue to use IRC for their gaming needs.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I think computerizing DnD is a bad development. The best part of DnD, for me, was hanging out at my friends' houses. DnD went with eating, drinking, and socializing. The social aspect came first, the game was second. If I'm going to play *computer* games with my friends, I'll choose a game made specifically for that.
Even though I'm retired from WoW, too, I thought it was so well done, that any similar game would have to be almost indistinguishable from it. I thought Blizzard did an excellent job with the artwork, and the depth in character customization kept me playing for a long time.
If I want to play DnD, I'll play face-to-face only. There are already options if I want to play games on a computer.
If you've been doing something for 19 years, you're a veteran at it by any sane standard. Gaming doesn't work on the seniority system. This is a hobby, not a union payscale.
And frankly, if you've been doing the same thing for 30 years, and all you can do is flaunt close-mindedness on any new ideas and pooh-pooh the experience of anyone who came a few years after you that officially makes you an old fart, not a veteran.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I am surprised by all of the complaining about how the mechanics of the game are all MMO based and RPG is left to the side.
:)
This is simply not true. My group just gave 4e a shot on Saturday, and I have to say that the general reaction from all 7 of us was that it is a fine gaming system... we still have a lot to learn about it, but it went well....
We also had one of our best ROLEPLAYING sessions to date, and this group has been playing well in this regard for years. We spent TWO HOURS in non-combat situations, talking to the local townsfolk in our starting village and in Winterhaven. We learned a lot, and made a lot of friends in the town through some very savvy roleplaying (and our dwarves still got drunk and made an a** of themselves, but our wizard was savvy enough to make sure the barmaid was aware of the situation before hand...
We had a great mixture of the serious and humorous aspects of the game, from all involved.
The skill checks for diplomacy, and sense motive (insight) and the like were still there (when they needed to be)... all the options are still available, just condensed into more sensible skill check options.
Can you pull off a roleplaying session like that in an MMO? Nope. It's still D&D folks. At it's heart, it is still a roleplaying game. Each group will roleplay to the extent that they want to. It's all in how the DM presents the material and how the players react to that material.
This has ALWAYS been the case, regardless of edition. Roleplaying isn't a rule you can codify and enforce, at least well. It has to come from the players and the DM.
Given the non-combat encounter system, I'd say this version even attempts to encourage this kind of thing, but I can't comment on it because we haven't tried that yet.
We also fought in two encounters (about an hour each) The kobolds were tricky little guys, using their powers to shift all over the board. Even with our numbers, they were a threat, the wizard almost bought it, as did our dwarven fighter, even with healing surges and all the like (btw, you can use second wind only once per encounter... there is still a need for clerics (and warlords), their abilities came in very handy.
Give the game a shot before you poo-poo it. I think it's quite interesting, and is still D&D. THe "powers" format will take a little getting used to, but I think it will ultimately simplify things while still giving characters enough rules-based flavor to allow people to roleplay their characters anyway they want.