D&D 4th Edition Details Released 171
Wired is reporting that some juicy details of Wizards of the Coast's new 4th edition for Dungeons and Dragons are being leaked on to the web from the D&D Experience in Arlington, VA this week. "Wizards of the Coast, the current custodians of the D&D universe, have been talking about the upcoming fourth edition of the game for months, but they've been fairly cagey about hard details, preferring to tell us more about how elves love footraces than how much damage a fireball does. They're running actual 4e games at D&D Experience, though, and thanks to people with scanners, you can too!"
I don't understand the hatred towards D&D. (Score:2, Interesting)
They sat down in the food court, and started playing. After about 20 minutes or so, a tribe of Latino gangsta scum came over and started taunting them for playing D&D in public. I only overheard a portion of what they were saying, and a lot of it was in horribly broken English that I couldn't figure out for the life of me, but I did hear phrases like "Dungeons & Faggots", and "cacho geek gringo".
I can understand not liking D&D. I've played it before, and didn't really enjoy it. But the pure hatred towards these players that I witnessed was something else. I found it actually pretty disturbing.
Is this really stil about gaming or... (Score:3, Interesting)
What I liked best about roleplaying was that you didn't really need much to have fun. You basically needed a good DM to setup a story and who was familiar with the rules, but that didn't have to cost much. When we started out a friend bought the D&D starters kit which had the basic rules, copied them for us and so began our quest. We didn't need much more; the DM setup the whole stories using using a notebook (the paper thing, not a laptop
And when the party grew and we wanted more I eventually stumbed upon the D&D Rules Cyclopedia [amazon.com] (sorry for the commercial link but its the best I could find). And that was the beginning of the end for us; all of a sudden we had all the rules and every table you could possibly dream of in 1 big ass book. Even better; it even clearly explained how you could expand on the D&D universe to add enhancements of your own. In the end we ended up creating our own imaginary island on which we would live several nice adventures. In the end it wasn't about knowing all the rules or living it strictly as told. We cared about the role playing and the adventuring, nothing else.
It was also during that time when I got in contact with AD&D 2nd edition. What struck me as odd from the start were the tremendous amounts of books you required to setup a good game, or at least thats how it looked to me. Personally I got completely sucked into Dragonlance. Not so much on playing but reading the stories from Weiss and Hickman. I collected the whole Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends and also many paperbacks with 3rd party stories. Some of those were quite amazing. However, then it suddenly struck me that the whole thing was aimed at a very particular crowd and many stories all centred about a common goal: stopping Takhisis from performing her evil deeds. And all guided by several (many) very strict rules and hints and tips.
And after checking out dozens of AD&D 2nd edition rule books (not specifically aimed at Dragonlance) I couldn't help wonder about one very simple and basic idea: "Where is the roleplaying in all this?". To me it felt like the whole "RPG experience" was picked up and used to describe a whole different thing. Sure, you had your roleplaying and it wasn't
Well, its a trend I saw happening throughout the scene. The Dragonlance books I so adored were illustrated mainly by Larry Elmore. An artist who's work I really admired. Its only natural that I bought some of his artbooks ("The art of Dragonlance") which I really enjoyed. But, picture my surprise when I noticed that after a few years (5 or so) they suddenly changed the pictures on the covers. The Elmore pictures were gone and replaced by other stuff. Even the whole TSR logo and approach was different. And it was then and there where I saw that things turned more mainstream (in my experience at least).
Next you had AD&D 3rd edition (not too long ago iirc, I could be mistaken) and now the next rules have leaked out. And then, to finish up this long story, I cannot help ask myself: "What happened to creating your own story based on existing rules using nothign more but some pieces of paper and your dice". But like I said; it must be my age showing
Re:Classes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
See, I actually like it this way. It always bothered me that someone could stand there and take 40 arrows to the chest and keep on fighting. The way it's done in 4e, one arrow from a good marksman is a mortal wound. You need to spend fairly scant resources to keep yourself alive, or think about how you'll cooperate to prevent that marksman from getting his shot off. It's much better, and in the hands of a competent DM, should be far more "cinematic" and fun.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Red & Blue books (Score:3, Interesting)
Give me my red and blue rule books and I'll be off to the Keep on the Borderlands or the Isle of Dread. If I have some time, on the way I'll stop by the Palace of the Silver Princess.
Sure, the later books filled in a lot of missing material, but the basic and expert sets covered what you needed to start playing and having fun. (I also liked the first edition of AD&D.) If I'm playing a game I don't want to be bogged down in so many details and minutia that I stop having fun. Do I really need to worry about having a sewing kit? I battle orc hordes and packs of bugbears - why should I worry about having spare tabards in my backpack so I look nice for the victory feast?
Now, a lot of that can be fixed by a good DM, but many start considering the details once they see them in the book. It never would have entered their mind that you need to keep a sewing kit - except that it's in the equipment list, so you should have bought one if you wanted one. Keep things simple. Keep them fun. If I wanted to handle all of the historical details, I'd join a civil war reenactment group. If I wanted to handle all of the details - I'd worry about doing laundry in real life. If I want to role play - I'll start living a second life. With all the new rulebooks, and their inflated prices, it's cheaper to live a double life.
Re:Holy Power Levels Batman!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution was building characters that started at level 5, or thereabouts. So 3rd and now 4th edition are just being honest and getting rid of the 1st-4th levels that sucked to play, sucked to DM, and actively encouraged min-maxing and not roleplaying.
Parent is sooo right! (Score:3, Interesting)
To make an analogy to the IT world: I see D&D something like the SQL of RPGs. It's ancient, unwieldy, expensive, slow, unneccessary and really crappy by modern standards but for the reason of some undiscovered infinetly raging mass-psychosis people think of it as the prime example in it's field.
If you're planning on getting into RPG (again) please *do* check out the alternatives of which I listed some above. They deserve to be considered as a RPG gaming system.