Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Latest News

Lord Aramil of Dreadwood writes "Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'"

Now that's what I call

News for Nerds.

Re:Now that's what I call

Tough crowd you got here.

It worked for me: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=272173&cid=202 56551 [slashdot.org]

Re:Now that's what I call

I was into D&D in school, as were lots of us, but then in university I discovered RuneQuest, then the awesome Call of Cthulhu. Please someone turn that into an online MMORG. There there was Paranoia, Aftermath, that Toon one whose name escapes me for the moment, Villians and Vigilanties, Champions, Stormbringer, the one about being a muskateer. Then I found Steve Jackson games and still love a good game of Illuminati and Car Wars. My goodness I must be so damn old now! Ahh memories.

Re:Now that's what I call

The problem with MMORPGs is that a lot of the fun in a P&P RPG copmes from the dynamic between the players and GM, in an MMORPGs there's no GM, only rules that the players sooner or later try to bend their way and exploit in every way possible.

Re:Now that's what I call

Hell for Nerds [chick.com]! I was reading that yesterday and thought it was particularly relevant.
My favorite part is when the girl kills herself because her character died.

The real question is...

Will it be a DX10/Vista only title?

(Said in jest, not out of ignorance)

Re:The real question is...

Breaking news: New dice required to play D&D4! The old ones don't comply to GHS 2.0.4 (Gaming Hardware Standard) and can't understand the new IDRTP (Improved Dice Result Transfer Protocol) needed to confirm critical hits on good looking waitresses. Read: They don't bear the required symbols and don't have the right number of sides ;)

Re:The real question is...

Actually, I believe they were planning on DX20...

Re:The real question is...

Actually, you're more correct than you may realize. A major part of 4E is that it's tied into a "Digital Initiative", with Dragon & Dungeon magazines online-only, and character generation, mapping, and campaign utilities all online, for a monthly $10 subscription fee (think WOW).

There's even an online gaming table -- the demo is a native Wiondows desktop application, and it does indeed rely on DirectX: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204368&pag e=1&pp=40 [enworld.org]

WOTC Death Throes

mod parent interesting

The AD&D 3.5 manuals are just too damned complicated. Hundreds of pages and table after table after table. It's more like a software spec than game instructions. No one new is going to get onto this. If you're going to make it that complex, let a computer handle all that messing around.

Enter WoW. It's the AD&D online that AD&D never had. Must irk them to see all that money going to someone else. Their own DDO Stormreach bombed. This is a desperate ploy to cling some of their market back. If they can find people who'll pay $$$ for all new AD&D 4.0 books. In this day and age of the net does it have to be WOTC that rewrite the rules a few solitary voices claim so badly need repairs. Nope. Fans could do this by themselves. WOTC, like the RIAA, are on an outdated business model.

If someone went to a VC with this as a business plan, they'd get laughed out of the office. WOTC on their way out.

Re:WOTC Death Throes

I just brought in several more players to my gaming group just the other day. If you really think that WoW is competition for D&D, you've never really played the game. D&D engages the imagination and uses this thing called 'roleplaying' that WoW severely lacks. Computer games, no matter how hard they try, simply cannot capture the imagination and cooperative element that pen-and-paper in-person role-playing games provide.

However, if the only D&D you played was "by the book" or "hack and slash", then yes, you would probably be better off with WoW, or even Diablo.

I seriously doubt WotC is dying. The D&D franchise is still extremely large. It may take years for people to switch over, but they'll be making their money, one way or another.

Re:WOTC Death Throes

I hate to reply to myself, but there's no "edit" button on slashdot, so here I go:

Yes, it does have to be WotC that rewrites the rules. Trust me. Fan-based rule rewrites have happened, many a time, and they have never caught on. They don't have that "Wizards" seal-of-approval. They're not often play-tested, nor made by developers with years of experience. Go around on the Wizards boards sometime and try and find me a serious fan retooling that is used by more than a small handful of people. You won't. Like it or not, the people that play D&D shell out their money for a book of rules. They could go to the fans, but for some reason they feel that what Wizards provides is worth spending money on, while what the fans provide is to be swept under the rug. Much like how you pay money for the Harry Potter books (to give an example) but throw fanfics into the bit bucket.

Re:WOTC Death Throes

Nonsense. I fondly remember many middle school afternoons playing D&D going into the forest and grinding against gradually larger and larger boars until I eventually hit level 20 and fought dragons.

Isn't that how everyone else played?

Re:WOTC Death Throes

Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's the norm, nor does it mean it's right. I'm sure you enjoy roleplaying getting 30 pieces of Boar Meat or Skeleton Bones for the local "quest giver". Yeah. Seems like a realistic and engaging world to me. Griding to level 70 really makes me create characters that are engaging and unique and create moral dilemmas by themselves. Everytime I hear something about going on raids and running instances really gets me into character and makes me think that I'm somehow not just another generic Human Mage. The fact of the matter is, D&D is designed as a game that engages your imagination and encourages roleplaying, while WoW is a game designed to get you to keep grinding and collecting widgets so you'll buy the next month of the subscription. While you may not play it that way, it's still how it was designed and intended to be played. It sounds like you've never played D&D under a good DM.

Re:WOTC Death Throes

but defending my people from those who wish to use and exploit them certainly captures my mind and heart.
Later on, you fight demons who are trying to destroy the entire world you know and love

What WoW lacks, compared to pen-and-paper role-playing, is state and consequences. If you devote your time to destroying the Defias, go through the Deadmines, kill the guy, nothing changes. 15 minutes later, all those Defias you killed are back. You've defended no one. Letting them run rampant in the countryside doesn't impact life in the town in any way. If nobody hung out in Outland fighting demons, the demons would never take advantage of it to destroy the world. The only thing making it more compelling than a regular computer RPG is the other players.

I like the lore and many of the storylines in WoW, and I do play it. It's hardly an 'either/or' proposition. But I'd never ditch my tabletop Supers game to play WoW; it will, after all, be there when I'm done. But if I skipped a run of a tabletop game, my team might fail to stop the villain and boom, no more city, and I'd have to deal with the consequences of that next time I play. And that's one of the biggest differences.

Re:WOTC Death Throes

You obviously never saw the 2nd Ed rules books and suppliments. Or the rules for systems such as Rolemaster or GURPs.

D20 is actually quite straight forward rules wise. Many table top games rely on probability matricies, d20 simplified the matricies compared with the old THAC0 (to hit armor class zero) rules and the like.

Half-assed fixes

Bring back Dark Sun and Planescape you sons of bitches and then your game won't suck anymore. Heck, they even watered down Forgotten Realms for the 3rd edition. Once they stop being pussies and stop whining about their RPGs being too hard they will get the hard core gamers to come back.

Re:Half-assed fixes

Bring back Dark Sun and Planescape you sons of bitches and then your game won't suck anymore. Heck, they even watered down Forgotten Realms for the 3rd edition. Once they stop being pussies and stop whining about their RPGs being too hard they will get the hard core gamers to come back.

Does being "hard core" consist of calling people bitches and pussies?

Re:Half-assed fixes

When last I checked, nothing is stopping "hardcore" roleplayers using the older rules for there games.

Re:Half-assed fixes

they will get the hard core gamers to come back.

Real hard core gamers make up their own game systems and game worlds.

Only slightly less hard core people rape, pillage, and convert their vast piles of source materials from a diverse set of game systems and versions thereof. The good ones can do most of it on the fly.

That's half the point of p&p rpgs and why their translations to the computer have been relatively weak and unsatisfying, at best capturing the numbers game of equipment design and basic combat.

Seriously if your problem with D&D is that a setting is 'missing' or 'wrong', the problem is you.

Re:Half-assed fixes

Agreed.

I'm chuckling at people who think any change to simplify the system is a change for the worse. The Hackmaster crowd can always play Shadowrun if they want an evershifting catalog of contradictory rules and exceptions.

Obviously, the proof is in the pudding, but for now what I'm hearing about D&D 4.0 is very positive. There are lots of rules like grappling that bear no relation to the other game rules and which grind the game to a halt when you try to use them. There are skills like Use Rope which are clearly inferior to other uses of your skill points, like Spot or Use Magic Device. Other skills and abilities quickly become obsolete: e.g. Climb, Heal and Jump (both are replaced by spells). Gear, especially flat +stats items, has become the end-all and be-all of advancement. And the endless prep work and bookkeeping, especially for the GM, is a waste of time and detracts from the fun of the game.

Plus, a game needs a reboot from time to time. AD&D became bloated with endless supplements, kits and spells that eventually made play completely impenetrable. 3.5 is heading in the same direction. YOu can't stop that, but you can occassionally reboot, reproducing and refining the stuff that works and dumping or rewriting the stuff that doesn't.

None of this is specific to newbies, either. Hard-core players would love to have a simplier but still thematically and tactically rich game, because then you can have five fights a night instead of three. Or your GM can afford to make the same three fights much more interesting, unique and challenging. Or you can free up some time for, G-d forbid, actually RP your character.

There are tons of games out there with clunky rules if you want difficulty and tedium for its own sake. I'm cheering for D&D because while I love 3.5, I can see the game becoming much more fun.

Re:Half-assed fixes

Those are good examples, and you make a great point at low and mid-levels, but when you get to high level play you can easily add 10 minutes per day of Spider Climb to your boots for 7,200gp. At that point, costs like that are a rounding error. Or better yet, buy an item that gives you flight-- not only do you never need to worry about jump or climb again (except in antimagic fields), but you also can bypass content and travel more swiftly. You no longer need a mount or other transport other than as a tactical choice (eg mounted combat). You have a potent kiting mechanism against many ground-only monsters.

Sure there are situational cases where Climb or Jump are still useful; but those are so rare that at high level play you're likely to jump less often than you are to use Use Rope. RP purists can still buy those skills (along with Profession: Basketweaver) but D&D is designed around combat, so you're shooting yourself in the foot if you do. Ideally, D&D shouldn't punish you for good RP; games like World of Darkness actually reward it. Ideally since skills cost the same they should be similar in overall utility; you'll never be perfectly balanced but it's like setting a level for a spell: if it's a spell you couldn't imagine NOT getting it then it's too powerful and if you can't imagine ever blowing a valuable spell slot or action casting it then it's not powerful enough.

Some people think that roleplaying and gaming are mutually incompatible-- or at least compete with one another. At times, that's true, but it needn't be so. We power-game in real life. My friend who had a high Int dumped all his skill points into "Knowledge: Computer Programming" to maximize his weekly skill check to earn the maximum number of gold pieces. Another friend, who has a high Cha score, splurged on masterwork clothing (+2 to diplomacy checks) and constantly socializes (checks Diplomacy) to maximize people's attitude towards him. These friends give him business connections (Aid Another on his weekly profession check), let him in on the latest gossip (aid another on his already-good Gather Information score) and do him favors (since they are Helpful towards him). He also has had a string of great girlfriends, which I can't put into D&D terms because I don't know the system for seduction, but you get the point.

Is that min-maxing? Sure! And it's definitely true to life because it is real life. :)

Dungeons & Dragons...

Contributing to the prevention of teen pregnancy since 1974! (and not through any fault of the girls either)

In any game's history...

The first time you hear "got rid of useless feature X", that's a sure sign the game sold out to the mainstream.

To the true gamer, there is no such thing as "useless feature".

Ok...

None of the following makes any sense to me:

"Blogger and Dragon magazine writer Jonathan Drain is tracking the latest developments on the new D&D edition. Highlights include: Thirty levels instead of twenty, no more XP costs for magic items creation, flexible talent trees replacing feats and prestige classes, a new racial bonuses system that obsoletes ECL, and an end to rubbish skills like Forgery and Use Rope. A quote from the blog: 'Unlike 3.5, all the changes this time around sound like they're definitely for the better... If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee.'

Unfortunately I don't know whether to feel old or cool.

Re:Ok...

I suppose somebody should explain it for the newbs who are passingly curious:

Thirty levels instead of twenty basically means there's more headroom for higher-level adventuring before normal players have to worry about abtruse and convoluted 'epic character' rulesets/feats/whatever that often feel very non-canon.

No more XP costs for magic items creation means that you no longer lose experience points (gained by running quests, killing monsters) whenever you create a magic item. This is a Really Good Thing(tm) because it would invariably mean that the one person in each group who got saddled with building a character capable of crafting specialized magic weapons for everyone got shafted good and hard when the time came to start whipping up custom +5 swords of Destroy All Life that cast Karsus Avatar three times a day (injoke, sorry).

Feats were basically very generalized character bonus property snapons that you would add (on average) every three levels. This could be anything from improving your character's skill at the short sword (Weapon Focus: Short Sword), to them gaining the general ability to to double the duration of beneficial spells (although doing so made them harder to cast). Prestige classes were basically specialized variants of the normal basic classes (or occupations, examples of classes would be fighter, mage, thief, etc.) that had special properties: examples include the "Frenzied Berserker" spinoff of the Barbarian, the "Assassin" spinoff of the Rogue, and so forth. Canon prestige classes were *in general* slightly weaker than the base classes they were derived from, but if used very very carefully in moderate proportions could be game-breakingly powerful (Fighter/Bard/Red Dragon Disciple/Frenzied Berserker players will know exactly what I am talking about). Both of those systems apparently got folded in to class-specific development trees, which is very similar to how (surprise!) World of Warcraft handles this basic concept.

Racial Bonus system shedding ECL: ECL stands for Effective Character Level. With so many different races/sub-races in D&D it was impossible to keep them all balanced, so certain 'uber' races like Aasimar, Tieflings, Drow, and Deep Gnomes were assigned Effective Character Levels. What this basically meant was that they got pushed back one to three levels on the experience tree so that at the point where a human character was level 5, a drow party member of theirs was likely to be 3. Given the degree to which levels are the beginning and end of a character in D&D (particularly spell-casting classes, double-particularly sorcerers) this could make things very un-fun, especially in the upper game where levels are few and far inbetween. Getting rid of this comes as a massive relief to me, as it's always struck me as the single least pleasant 3.x convention.

The final bit is just cleaning up some of the more ridiculous skills out there which nobody uses.

In general, all of this is *hugely* positive news for D&D fans. I hope to God clerics got toned back a bit as well, but that might be asking for too much.

--Ryv

Re:Ok...

You don't sound happy...

You are a happy citizen, aren't you?

Only commie mutant traitors are unhappy...

You're not a commie mutant traitor are you?

Neph-I-LIM

Re:Except it's a game

Well, I hope you make it clear to your players that their actions are irrelevant and you are the one directing the play and not them.

 

Re:Ok...

The vast majority of the rules are about killing and looting. Sure, you *can* play a different style, but why would you want to? The non-combat rules are poorly thought out and not at all detailed, you'd be much better off using one of the many systems actually designed for non-combat play. I however happen to enjoy the traditional dungeon crawl, and a great many other D&D players do too.

Values

It's more a matter of the value you can get out those skills. You might have an actual need for 'use rope' once every five sessions, while other skills such as 'spot' or 'diplomacy' would be used repeatedly during a session. So you have the choice of spending your limited number of points gaining ranks in a skill that might eventually be useful versus one you know will be used over and over.

The other side of this is that the people writing the adventures know that most players don't take those skills. So they don't add events that require the skills, or provide alternative ways of solving the problem. So it spirals down fast.

Interesting

When I first saw the headline, I said to myself, "are they kidding?"

In this age of MMORPG's, where issues with game balance can be tweaked monthly, the game universe can be expanded just as often (if not on the fly), and campaigns can involve real-time cooperation among dozens of players, could there really be a thriving market for a pastime as "last-gen" as D&D?

Then it occurred to me, at least with D&D you're actually interacting with real, identifiable people. No griefing, no gold farming, no bots, no avatars with tearing polygons, no server lag to contend with.

Then I could see the market.

Re:Interesting

Then it occurred to me, at least with D&D you're actually interacting with real, identifiable people. No griefing, no gold farming, no bots,

You've never played with my group of friends.

When we started out, it was cool...but gradually we introduced new people into our group and now all that's left when I play are a bunch of asian people who barely speak English who just want to stand in one spot in a dungeon I'm running and farm for gold. Some have even just resorted to sending a laptop with canned responses in their stead....so the last time I hosted a D&D group, it was me DMing and 5 laptops sitting around a table.

I think I'm going to give this up soon. But the laptops ARE pretty polite.

Re:Interesting

Tabletop still has a niche.

First, there's physical proximity. It's an excuse to sit down with a bunch of friends, pop open a beer and enjoy yourself. You can't quite match that in a MMORPG, even with Teamspeak.

Second, there's creativity. My experience in MMORPGs is that there's endless grinding of trash mobs, highly scripted raid encounters that you fight every week the same way, and PVP battles that are exciting but still pretty much scripted. A good DM designs all kinds of weird and interesting encounters, including conversational RP encounters.

Finally, there's the "greatest hero ever" effect. In a MMORPG, you can't ALL be the great hero of the world. Ultimately, everyone has to be roughly balanced with one another. Even the top-end raiders and PVPers on the server, while great and well geared, aren't going to change the game world any. And everyone else doesn't even have a name for themselves. In a pen-and-paper setting you and your friends really can do world-shaking events. You can down Illidan and he STAYS DEAD. (mostly)

OK so let me wrap it all together. In my weekly D&D game, I get together with friends who live up to an hour away in every direction. We meet up, grab some drinks, talk about how things are going face to face, and then get down to the game. One of us is a ruthless mercenary ranger, another is a minotaur who just completed his plot to be crowned Emperor of the Minotaur Empire, another is a warlock who is finally realizing his goal of revenge against the red dragons, and another is a mystic who attained godhood. We've been playing for five years, from level one to our current (epic) game. We now run two side games in the same world-- one game we play our own lowbie minions, and the other we are actually starting to play mid-level antagonists. When we do world-shaking things, the world actually shakes and stays shaken. Our actions have permanent consequences, our enemies and allies react to us (and try to pre-empt us), and we have to consider the economic, political, social and religious consequences of our actions.

None of this is possible, even remotely, in a MMORPG. I love WoW, I play avidly. I've got a 70 and am working on two more. I PvP avidly, and am in an end-game raiding guild. To some extent, WoW and D&D do scratch the same itch, but neither is a good substitute for the other.

Dammit

just as I was getting comfortable playing 3.5 !!
really, this D&D thing starts to smell like software with every now and then a shiny new release with fresh bugs and annoyances.
and then after a while, surprise surprise! bugfixes!
and then finally when you think things start to settle, tada, yet another 'upgrade' or whatever.
it starts to piss me off.

More levels... sigh

I know that having more levels is the "in" thing to do.

Originally, in AD&D First Ed, you hit level 20, there was a high chance that your DM would suck up your char sheet because your character was so powerful that it was a god, and not a minor one.

The first MUDs were somewhat based around that, when you hit the topmost level, you became an immortal. The level limit for "ascension" ended up being between 20-30.

As time went on, this limit climbed to 40, 50, then on some MUDs, even was as high as level 100.

Around 1999, MMOs came into the picture. UO didn't use a level based system, but EQ did. To keep players going, and the game interesting for people at the level cap, the original level 50 limit was raised to 60, 65, 70, now 75, and in the next major expansion 80. EQ2 similar, except the game is structured by tiers, starting at 50, then 60, now 70, and will be 80 come the next expansion. WoW too. Next expansion, level 80.

There is something lost in this climb for levels, to the detriment of everything else. In WoW, level pretty much is the gauge of your character's abilities, so a character that is level 70, that has crappy equipment is more often asked for groups/raids than a level 65 with excellent stuff.

I used to DM, and have been since First Edition AD&D. In campaigns, levels were there, but they were mainly a gauge of progress, of what difficulty I needed to make encounters. Characters had a lot more ways to progress and gain in power. They could gain reputation by pushing back orc scout parties, learn spells (In First Ed., magic items were VERY rare, and a +1 sword would be something that would be a 3-4 session campaign, but worth obtaining.), and perhaps travel, guarding trade caravans (or waiting until the caravan was alone, then sacking the people on it.) As the party grew, they became impressed into a local ruler's service as a scout group for taking care of enemies and seeking relics, then the party eventually was able to start their own kingdom after a number of fights, and having to not just go head off places, but make sure the kingdom was in good order while they were gone.

I like levels at a low number. For a lot of intents and purposes, 20 is enough. Epic levels in third edition and up never really played a part, because at that level of character power, I'd have to move the party off of the usual medieval fantasy world into either different spheres (Spelljammer), or do like everyone and their brother does, and start plane hopping, which meant that it wasn't really my campaign world, but just using the Planescape sourcebooks pretty much verbatim.

Maybe I am an old timer, but I try to get player characters to grow "horizontally", and focus on getting reputation, gear, and status with their class guilds, rather than climb the numbers with regards to level. When getting status and doing missions, the XP comes in its due time.

Re:More levels... sigh

I've not got much to add, except to say that you pretty much summed up my opinions and experience. The only time I ever played D&D (not even the advanced version :)), was my very first game. After that I discovered all the other games out there - games that weren't stuck in some anachronistic wargaming time warp - and I never looked back. I read 3rd edition when it came out, because I worked in the industry and there was a lot of excitement over OGL, but still levels, and (A)D&D in particular, still feel quaintly old fashioned to me. Its good for characters to grow in terms of skills and experience, albeit slowly, but as you say, growth mostly happens in terms of the experiences, reputation - horizontally. Meeting old friends, revisiting old places or having a familiar base - to me that is growth as much as any gain in skills or THAC0.

WoW phenomenon?

Until this article, I would've been sure that D&D is dead. I wouldn't even give much on AD&D, with d20 stealing the show and all. But maybe that's just because for the past 5 or 6 years I've been concentrating more on smaller RPGs and found what I had been missing all the time with the "mainstream" stuff: Innovation, creativity and an honest desire to create a good game, above all.

I wonder how much of that's true for MMORPGs as well. I've never played WoW, but I've seen at least 20 MMORPGs and they are all more or less the same. Played one, played 'em all. Which, of course, explains why players concentrate on just a few really large ones - there's no compelling reason to go anywhere else, so you can stay where your friends are.

But in pen-and-paper RPGs, you can be more flexible, can't you?

Here are some of the games that I've enjoyed a lot, and where I would gladly exchange one evening of playing those for a full campaign of any (A)D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire or any other mainstream game:

Amber - though you absolutely have to have read the books
Godlike - great setting, interesting and quick game mechanics
The Riddle of Steel - has its shortcomings, but for some reason it was a great experience
Fireborn - I'd kill for having a regular Fireborn group
Sorcerer - consensus opinion of many, not just me: One of the best indie RPGs out there

The problem, of course, is the same why WoW has millions of subscribers, and other (possibly better) games struggle: It's hard to find other players.

Some useful links

Video 1 [youtube.com]
Video 2 [youtube.com]
Video 3 [youtube.com]
Video 4 [youtube.com]
Video 5 [youtube.com]

There are more ... check the Related Videos on the right side of any video you look at.

DDO Dungeons & Dragons Online

No one talked about this subject yet.But I wonder whether Dungeons & Dragons Online [ddo.com] would be converted to 4th and how hard programmers and other stuff should work.Please enlighten me.

Whew?

While I'm still not sure if I'll drop a bunch of money on getting this new edition when it comes out I'm slightly more optimistic about this edition of the game. The designers seem to have a few good ideas in their heads; not least of which is getting rid of those bloody prestige classes. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen that feature abused!

Still, is it enough to get me to spend money? I dunno. And the sting of needing to update the material I've written hasn't quite worn off yet. It'd be nice, though, if they could cut down to one core rulebook, or failing that have a basic rulebook handling the first few levels -- sort of a digest version of the core rules

not worth the investment

As a player of D&D since third edition (maybe four or five years going, now), I have to say that my group of friends is not particularly interested in investing the time and money of purchasing/learning the new 4.0 source books, when they're finally released. We just don't have a need for them.

As of right now, most of our gaming sessions (which last between 4 and 6 hours) involve at most, a dozen die rolls that mean anything, and I'd say more often than not, a session ends without a single combat. I guess our campaigns have evolved into what could be considered drama. And to be honest, it's a much more enriching experience than a traditional hack & slash game that I so often see with newer/younger players.

This isn't to say we won't do a bit of research into the new system, but if all it does is revise the combat and levelling system, then we won't be adopting 4.0.

Wow

Suddenly, I feel very cool for not knowing or caring anything about this news.

Effect on other D20-based Systems?

It would be interesting to see the effect the new D&D Edition will have on other D20-based Games and third-party Sourcebooks.

According to TFA, the designers already took some clues from other D20 Games to incorporate into the new edition (the skill trees have been implemented into the new Star Wars D20, for example), but all changes into the D&D core books will in one way or another affect all the other D20 publications, especially (of course) alternative D&D settings and similar fantasy sourcebooks.

I am thinking primarily about things like the removal of prestige classes and the merging of core classes, because quite frankly, I was sick of all the more or less useful prestige classes seemingly appearing in every sourcebook, but their removal from the game means all those now obsolete classes must be converted or abandoned.

As there are so many D20-based books now, with a lot of them being supplements to the core D&D setting, the reaction to changes especially from other developers will be interesting to see.

I'm thinking

my scout/assassin, Ropeman the Forger, is going to need a little work.

No Use Rope?

Why does everyone rag on Use Rope? It and Tumble are the only two skills I always max out. Rope Use + Whip = crazy-Indiana-Jones-style, min/max goldmine. /dork off

Subject

In honor of 4 editions, the new rules are based on d4 gameplay, using the following results table (fig. 2b):

evens: success
odds: failure

Everything else translates well into the d4 system as well. For instance, percentage rolls are now 25d4 (yeah, like you used those bottom three percents). A Quasar Dragon's breath attack does (3.6x10^7)d4 damage to whichever planet it's aimed at. And so forth.

D+D is dead to me

http://www.burningwheel.org/ [burningwheel.org]

something "cool"

Why is something "cool" your character does have to be some bad ass move you do? Some magic spell that makes your sword +10 or something. Really, its getting to much make my character awesome and dm you try to defeat me. What happened to problem solving and team work in dnd? Battles are the most important part but these battles and the rest of the game shouldn't just be massive damage.

4e and the OGL/D20 License

I am surprise someone from this list hasn't talked about the possible forking between the 3.0/3.5 Open Gaming License (OLG) and the proposed new 4e OGL. Unlike a new version of Linux, the new D&D rules do not have to be under the old OGL, they are in effect a completely new operating system for D&D. It has been confirmed there will be a version of the OGL/D20 license, but with some added restrictions: 1) Professional game companies will need to pay a license. 2) Fan/Non-Pro offerings will have to be through their site www.gleemax.com (unconfirmed). Here is a list of known stuff about the new edition on the ENWorld forums: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204119 [enworld.org] Gleemax.com has stirred some controversy already because of the Terms of Service. The most blatant is that anything you post their grants Wizard's of the Coast limited rights to republish your material and limits your ability to publish anything that uses their IP, e.g. Greyhawk, Planscape, Forgotten Realms, etc. So, what does this all mean? Well, if the use restrictions on the 4e OGL/D20 license are, well too restrictive (and kinda takes the O out of OGL) that will mean a fork in the D&D development path. Some publishers will want the latest and greatest and put up with it, others will not and use the 3e OGL which has no licensing fees and cannot be terminated. There are already some development forks in 3e, Green Ronin's True 20 and Mutants and Masterminds rules, Iron Heroes and Arcana Evolved from Malhavoc Press (Monte Cooke) which take the core mechanics in new and different directions. Anyway, my two coppers on the subject, Saracenus

Obligatory...

How has this [cybermoonstudios.com] not been linked to yet?

DnD tries to emulate WoW?

The more I read about 4th edition, the more it sounds like WotC looked at WoW and is trying to emulate it. I don't think it should be the direction to move in, as Blizzard will always be way ahead of them, and DnD should not try to compete with any computer game in general, but focus on it's own strengths.

Why care?

Why does anyone hold on to these rules as sacrosanct? If you didn't like the rule requiring an XP expenditure for this-or-that, why not just disregard them? Why wait for a new book to purchase? Why not enable yourself? For that matter, why ever use "D&D" in this age? I suspect that FUDGE [fudgerpg.com] is an effectively superior replacement. There's no reason why you can't steal the monsters, weapons, etc; from your favorite system and simply apply them to FUDGE?

Shameless plug

Some friends of mine started making thier own world a long time ago, gotten pretty detailed. Here's a link [sisterworlds.com]

Gamer (fanboy) Response

I'm a big D&D guy, its my main hobby away from computers and Linux. Part time player, full time Dungeon Master. Been playing since junior high, I'm 34 now. As a Linux user, I feel WOTC is the best thing to happen to D&D, and gaming in general. The Dungeon Master is the only person who really needs the core set, and even then I'm not sure even he needs the books, but it helps. Players don't need anything, 3E, 3.5E, and soon 4E are all released under the OGL, which is an open source style license. Player information is released in a System Refrence Document, commonly known as the SRD. The core set (Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual) are for the most part made available for free. There are certain things that are left out, like character creation rules, but they are pretty easy to figure out. There is hundreds, if not thousands, of players on Myth Weavers [myth-weavers.com], DNDOG [dndonlinegames.com], ENWorld [enworld.org], and other sites who don't own the core set.

Of course, if your on board with the D&D Insider your probably going to need to buy the core set. The Insider is actually the Dungeon and Dragon magazines which WOTC brought back in house, combined with a ton of digital tools such as an online game table, dungeon master tools, character creator and visualizer, and other features. That would probably be the only reason to buy the core set, unless of course you have some reason to want to see WOTC succeed, which I do. Of course that doesn't mean I'm going to buy supplements I'll never use. I'm pretty far from the completist.

This really isn't a money grab, at least not on some levels. Yeah, I'm sure Hasbro is happy about the core set, but Third Edition being tapped dry. There is nowhere else to go. I don't want to see WOTC die. If they don't release a new edition, its over. Look at whats been released lately, compendium after compendium, splatbook sequels, worthless environment books, adventures I have no interest in playing. Nobody is buying these books, nobody but completists, and there isn't enough of those to keep a company afloat. Besides, there is plenty of rules that need to be tweaked, plenty of skills that need to go, plenty of classes that need revision. Third edition was broken the day they released it, ask Monte Cook, who wrote third edition.

Its time to take what everyone learned playing third edition for the last eight years, and make the game better. WOTC deserves their coin for what they do. Of course, I'm a WOTC fanboy, what do I know.

Pen & Paper is not FFIV

I really think pen and paper roleplaying games should get their own topic, instead of the generic "FFIV" one. After all, there is little in common with Mass Effect and D&D...

Yes, it's news for nerds, but it comes up sufficiently that it makes sense.

Mialee?

If nothing else, at least they have the opportunity to get rid of Mialee

Ok, who's Mialee? I assume that this [wizards.com] is her, but what's so bad about her that she needs to be gotten rid of? I don't care for the artwork on this page, but that's all up to the artist anyway ...

Thanks for the XP cost fix!

I always disliked the XP "cost" for creating of magic items. It really made no sense to lose your experience about things by creating the things you had experience for. It's like an IT support professional being dumbed down to below the peers he's helping by answering too many support calls. Or to pick a more suitable profession, a glassworker becoming retarded. Sure it's about magic this time, but still the same reasoning behind it.

So thanks for that at least! I understand it was there for balance reasons, but I hope the balance can be achieved more logically this time!

30 Levels!!? How much time do people have??

I started playing AD&D after buying the "original" D&D manuals (just the photocopied books plus some multi sided die) in a games shop in London in 1977. It took a couple of years to come up with our own rules and I started playiong regularly in about 1980. Now I still have a favourite character from about 1983 who is level 3. He's a great bloke (a bit thick and slow, but pretty strong) and he loves to amble around vast lands and has garnered quite a reupation in the last 20 odd years. The DM for the campaign writes a nice little magazine that has tried to capture some of the explits but the point is, after all this time my character is only level 3.

Compare this to WoW where, for instance, my son got to level 60 in about a month then wondered what to do.

It seems a little more attention to gameplay rather than levelling might reingigorate a whole new generation of players - they just might have to use their imaginations though :-)

Mind you, Blizzard will say they're making quite enough money thanks and they don't need to deviate from their current path and I can't blame them from a monetary point of view. [sigh]

How to NOT handle a major product release!

Okay, I just got back from GenCon.

The night they announced 4th Ed., someone mentioned it in passing and the response from everyone else in the group was "Huh? They announced that?"

Right there, they failed.

If any of you were there for the release of 3.0, you remember what a huge deal it was.

Then, the abortion of 3.5.

Now 4th Edition.

And the actual announcement copy on it was so dry that it HAD to have been written by a bean-counter. You start reading, get about 10 syllables in, and you're asleep.

And I LOVED the part about "Eight years of playtesting".

As a colleague of mine put it. "Oh. Thanks for telling me that I spent all that money on 3rd Edition stuff (and 3.5) for the *privilege* of playtesting a broken ruleset!"

The people in charge of 4th Edition, and ESPECIALLY the people in charge of product marketing and development need to be bitch-slapped for this lackluster bullshit.

Ah. And I LOVED the ENnies. They passed out 3MB (THREE MEGS!) USB thumbdrives with a character sheet and a logo on it. We guinea-pigged it on one computer, and the drive wasn't stable. The OS kept losing it. So, immediately after it was removed from the system, that system was scanned within an inch of it's life for spyware and malware.

popularity

Hope this causes D&D to be more popular again. It's a great game - but no one plays it.

Popularity of DnD

So I've read some of the quotes by the posters...

DnD is still pretty popular, but what happens is that those of us above the age of 30 who still play or enjoy the game find it more and more difficult to see a campaign through. Couples with kids that host. People show up with lots of beer. Then of the 4 hours of play time, too many people jump out of character.

It takes time and dedication, and sadly as people grow up, time is extremely limited.

Richard Garfield NEEDs a new yatch!

How are Richard and the WotC execs supposed to live with just 1 boat each?

3.5 Was fine. This is a cash grab. i hope the other developers don't, or at least delay adopting 4. They know there is a small market for the books further and further from the core. So to keep the cash flowing they have to keep reinventing the core.

This is why i RARELY buy D&D books. They're too damn expensive for what they are, they don't need to be in color or have color in the background of the text. If WotC wants me to buy more books they should lower the price to something realistic.

D&D needs a new edition

D&D is just too complicated. First edition D&D had so many rules and tables that you had to look up a table whenever you wanted your character to do anything, unless you'd played so long that you had all the tables memorized. Third edition went a long way toward ironing out a lot of that, but it still has problems. Basically anything that sends you back to the rulebook when you thought you knew how it worked needs to be simplified.

Things I think need to be fixed about D&D:

1. Turning undead. Its rules are totally different from everything else. Consolidate.
2. Special combat maneuvers. Consolidate the rules for disarming, tripping, grappling, etc.
3. Attacks of opportunity. Totally unnecessary complication. Get rid of them.
4. Actions. The rules governing what you can do in a round are too complex. Simplify.
5. Spells. Each one has its own set of rules, and there are hundreds. Consolidate them.

I have so many other criticisms, but no time to list them all. Basically, if it requires a table, it's too complicated and should be streamlined, in my opinion. Anything that detracts from fun is a bad thing to have in a game.

Re:For shites sakes

There is usually a conversion system. Usually, many versions of the conversion system, since player's tastes seem to vary so widely.