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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.
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
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
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
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
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.
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.