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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."
Yes, quite great. *gurps* Excuse me....
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I put on my robe and my wizard hat.
...having played less than 12 hours of DnD (or any tabletop game) in my life, this is the first time I've ever seen or heard something that made me want to sit down and play DnD.
Took this comment seriously, did you?
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.
Reading it only says so much. I had my first session today, and I must say that I found it less MMO:ish once you actually started playing it. Sure, some fundamental rules use the same ideas, but, that is in no way an issue when actually playing. I must say I liked DM:ing it, but it will be a while before I learn the mechanics, they are far less intuitive past a certain level since every power is an exception to the very bare core. So, a lot more "studying" is necessary than previous editions if you want to learn it all, but there is a shorter span until you can start playing your first game and understand what you are doing.
...and had a blast. My brother and I have never played D&D, but I have been listening to podcasts and reading about it for the past few months and definitely wanted to give it a try with someone who knew what they were doing.
We had a great time, especially when we essentially tied down an Ice Dragon and our main Fighter intimidated the Dragon into giving up (even without knowing the Dragon's language!) and we won the encounter without even killing it! It was so much more fun than raiding Onyxia, especially given all the freedom you have in D&D. I bought a book and can't wait to rope all my friends into it.
I posted my review at here. It seems to be unapologetic in imitating many aspects of MMORPGs. So you can like that or not, but its there. The good news is that unlike previous editions, when 3.5 goes out of print, there will still be many ways to get the rules. 3.5 is open-sourced (kinda). See d20srd.org. Also Pathfinder will provide new 3.6-ish books for new players wanting to try the old edition. Overall it's going to be a better time for all RPGers, even if you don't like 4th edition.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
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'
This "article" is sad in its unapologetic sycophanty. It says that everything in hte book is good.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- They increased type size AND whitespace in the books. Yep, less content.
- The PHB tells players how to play AND the GM how to gm. No dice.
- They still didn't simplifiy combat. Good god, I thought that was the reason they made another edition.
- No ranks in skills. So much for making a detailed and unique character, huh? Cookie-cutter it is then.
- 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?
- 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)?
-On that subject, he makes a big deal of how there is only ONE CHART!!!!! LOL for all classes, and says it is simplifying. Then he says you slip to the section on your class to get, essentially, your unique "key" to help you read the chart. GG.
-"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.
-Diagonal movement works the same as lateral movement". I assume this means they moved to hexes? no? Then I guess you can move faster by moving diagonally in about ANY circumstance. Once again, way to break the world.
-Every class has two suggested "builds". What did I say before about telling us how to play? Honestly, at least leave WHO we play up to us. Similarly, each class has a "role". Not that they are customizable or anything. Nope, it's just like "Do you want a DD or a tank?" all over again.
-Retraining is now not only core, but really basic. So in other words, feel free not to put thought into what skills and feats you take, just get the shiniest ones and clean up later.
- His section on the DMG made me just a little bit nauseous. He was all, "saying that people have to cooperate?! Not only is this idea foreign to the other Dungeon Master's Guides, but nobody but those savants at WotC would've thought of it! I thank them for imparting this knowledge into my undeserving hands."
-Treasure parcels. It's where you get 4 magic items and some money. Before I decided treasure by what the villain would have; how foolish! Now I have learned to make sure everyone gets a magical item every encounter!
-MM has 1 monster per page. In other words, say goodbye to all of the lesser-used guys: lantern archons, rasts, all them things my players would always scratch their heads about when they first appeared. Say hello to there being monsters someone with any time could easily memorize all the weak points to, and just plain not enough to make dungeons flarvorfully unique.
-In the MM section he makes deals over things that ALREADY existed, like a picture for each monster.
-Replaced DR with something that means the same. This guy loves it.
- Everything is just to explain to newbies how to play. No advanced mechanics. No strategy. No fun.
I think you can tell about everything you need about this reviewer when
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That explains why I stopped playing in my teens, and now that I'm married with a couple of kids, I'm interesting in playing again...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
( ) 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
I spent the day hashing over the 4E rules, and I must say that just about all the changes I see are very good from a real-world, let's get 5 people together and have fun for 3 hours kinda way.
One of the reasons that I've clung to my original 1E rules over the years (I've got the '70s version and an early '80s reprint of the 3 core books) is that 2E and 3E just seemed to needlessly complicate the hell out of everything. Instead of 15 minutes to fight a party of Orcs, the encounters started taking an hour or more -- OMG skill check, fortitude check, balance check, grapple check, sphincter check. Every single 2E or 3.xE game that I've participated in had house rules to bring combat closer to 1E just so your 3 hour gaming session had some actual progress instead of 2 encounters, loot, nite guys!
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really think the rules are a basic framework within which to enjoy making a story with friends. I've never really played D&D with any powergamer or rules lawyer types, and to be honest, I'm thankful.
If you want sim-style combat, and save/skill checks out the ass, make house rules. Just don't overcomplicate the core rulebooks!
To sum up: I'm very happy with almost everything I've seen in the 4E rules so far. They mean that I can get buddies and their wives together on short notice and have a game up and running in an hour. Character development is quite a bit more like CRPGs and WoW, which is fine by me! Most people who'd play at my table already understand spec/talent systems from WoW or wherever -- it just means there's less to explain, and it prompts characters to think about goals from the beginning (I love the destiny bit -- getting players to think about their character as part of an enormous story arc is great!).
I've heard a lot about the loss of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil, but they're honestly still there -- just called Good and Evil now. Part of me misses the old-style 9 grid alignment diagram, but I definitely won't miss having to explain those two apparent oxymorons to new players. I also *quite* like the new Unaligned (instead of true neutral) alignment -- far less restrictive than true neutral used to be. No druids in PHB1, alas, but I'm sure they'll be in PHB2. All of the starting classes are full-on archetypes, and there are none of what MMO types would call "hybrid classes".
The only things I truly dislike about the 4E rules so far is that it seems impossible to do combat without a minigrid. Again, I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always preferred more storytelling-style combat instead of sim/wargame style. It made gaming sessions move much more quickly. We'll see if I end up house-ruling over that after trying it out. I doubt seriously that I'd ever use the loot parcel rule. Magic items in my games are very few and very far between, mostly because the games are about the story, not lewts + power.
Anyhow, this is the first edition since the original that I think I'll adopt. I like the organization of the books, the playing advice/primers and even the DMing advice.
Alas, it feels like the collectible craze has finally struck the heart of D&D.
At the risk of sounding like I'm shaking my cane at those dratted kids (and maybe I am), this isn't a followup to the classic game, it's a repackaged version of the miniatures game. Look at the monsters ... they're essentially a card. The actual description, background and mythology of the creatures are negligible. The mechanics themselves are designed to be bound to a board, not played out in the imagination.
On some level I guess I can't blame them. As a system linking MMORPGs, miniatures games and card games, it works. They look at the income of Magic the Gathering or WOW and say "why can't we get a piece of that?!" so they design a game that will allow them to leverage the different merchandise against each other. It's not a bad system if that's what you have in mind and I can see it being very successful in that Microsoft sort of way. I know a lot of people who wouldn't touch this system with a 10-foot pole if it didn't have the D & D name on it, but since it does, they probably won't want to play anything else.
What's really sad to me is how hard it is to dig up any information on what can or cannot be created and distributed by players. They seemed to be starting to get the hang of it with opening the d20 system but this feels like a step in the opposite direction. It's becoming about leveraging their games onto players, not about empowering players to create their own games and worlds. I want tools to create stories with, to build worlds with ... as a gamer, I'm not a consumer of fantasy, I'm a creator of fantasy.
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.)