Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Review
Posted on May 30, 2008 by GRIM
Introduction
Unlike most RPG gamers in existence I didn’t come to roleplaying via D&D. My path to gaming ran something like:
Avid Reader > The Hobbit > Fighting Fantasy > The Lord of the Rings > MERP.
Very much in at the deep end and I didn’t run into D&D at all as a player or a GM until I was 13, four or five years into my gaming career. When I did play it the relative lack of sophistication and over simplistic constriction on what I could do as a character made me pronounce it ’stupid’, the final straw being when I managed to sneak up on a sleeping dragon and the rules couldn’t cope with me STABBING IT IN THE EYE before it could wake up.
Aside from a bit of dabbling in 2nd Edition (Dark Sun, great setting, still didn’t like the rules) and in computer game versions of D&D (Torment and Balder’s Gate) that was pretty much my limit so far as it came to D&D, fantasy appealed (Dragon Warriors, WFRP and others) but D&D didn’t because I didn’t really buy into its sacred cows so much.
3rd Edition though, and the OGL that went with it, dragged me back into D&D. Now I could engage with it on a design level and the open nature meant not only could I ‘fix’ it, but I could trade those fixes and ideas with others and get remuneration for it. Which was great! d20 had pretences at being a generic system, but it really wasn’t, it got shoehorned into every possible setting and genre under the sun, even when it didn’t fit and eventually the d20 bubble burst. and things settled down again.
What we were left with, though, was a rambling and over-bloated beast of a game with masses of WOTC and third party supplements sprawling in all directions, a behemoth filled with munchkinism and twinkish combination exploits so foul that even RIFTS players would turn their nose up at them.
Now we’re on to 4th Edition and I’ve been deliberately staying out of the gossip around it as best I can to come at the books fresh. I won my copies from Dungeon Magazine for the ‘best adventure I never wrote’ which should be published sometime before June 6th, but since I had books coming for free I didn’t see any harm in getting a sneak peak at what would be coming in the post. As such some of these comments are provisional and may be revised when I get to see actual, physical copies.
Going into this I’m coming from two directions, as both a consumer and a producer. As a consumer does 4th Edition deliver the type of game that I want to play? Does it compel and interest me? As a producer I’m looking at it and trying to anticipate where the market might go, what products might emerge, how the system might be customised and altered (if at all) and where problems might arise.
Overview
Reading through the books 4th Edition feels, to me, very much like an introductory game in a way that 3rd Edition wasn’t. The look, the feel, the language all seem, to me, to be angled towards bringing in new players. This is a really good thing, obviously, but I think that the targetting of the MMO market – which seems to be the aim – is a miscalculation. TTRPGs can’t beat MMOs at their own game, D&D aping MMORPGs is a bit like having your dad go through a midlife crisis, dying his hair, driving a porsche and trying to pass himself off as ‘Emo’. It’s a little embarrassing and not what he’s really good at. I think it may have been more productive to go after the areas where TTRPGs still excel over CRPGs and MMORPGs but hey, nobody listens to me.
I’ll wait to pass judgement on the D&D Insider computer platform but my gut instinct is that this is a miscalculation as well, charging the same amount as a typical MMO subscription for what amounts to a static graphical chess set that doesn’t even take care of some of the rolls etc for you and a few other bits and pieces that they are yet to prove they can deliver seems ludicrous to me, if it’s a choice between their WoW subscription and their D&D Insider subscription people aren’t going to go for D&DI in my opinion. If it were five or perhaps ten dollars a month I can see people subbing to it on the side but this, to me, seems overpriced.
Artwork
The three books seem to be going against the grain in terms of where graphic design has been heading in RPG books since the 90s. While the level of production is professional and the artwork standard good overall there’s very little ‘feel’ to the pages. No faux-parchment effect or little notebook conceits, very little ornamentation. It is very clean, very clear, quite minimalistic. On the one hand this makes the books much easier on the eye and a lot more readable, on the other hand it makes them feel rather clinical, perhaps not coincidentally like a computer game manual.
The artwork is fairly good throughout, though there are some disappointing pieces that have a washed out look and what appears to be CGI derived imagery that doesn’t really fit. While the overall art is good it lacks cohesion. Love it or loathe it 3rd Edition had a consistent look to it ‘dungeonpunk’ while 4th Edition is a bit all over the place. The strongest theme to come through is one, again, of computer-gamey feel, a sort of pseudo-anime, pseudo-Warhammer/WoW effort of massive shoulder pads and even larger weapons. Otherwise the rest of the art seems a bit all over the place, technically good but a little schizophrenic.
Writing
The writing is fairly clear throughout but a problem I noticed was that things were introduced before they were defined so, for example, if you were reading off the power descriptions they might have a formula. 2 x [Q] + Snarf, but you don’t find out what the Q stands for or what a Snarf is until page two-hundred and twelve. On a first read through this lead to a sense of bewilderment and frustration, unable to understand quite what I was reading – and this for someone who has several systems all but memorised.
Another flaw I felt existed in the writing was that there was no attempt, not even a weak one really, to reconcile the rules with reality, or even game reality. Things work as they do because the rules say that they do and that’s pretty much it. As someone who values immersion while roleplaying I can’t help but feel that this will detract from that experience, and that’s not the only place it occurs. Throughout the game characters aren’t really treated as characters so much as playing pieces, arrays of powers and abilities rather than personalities. The roles are described, again, in MMO terms so you end up not so much creating the persona of Corvin Ravenfeather the half-elf rogue but rather your ‘Assasination/Damage specced Rogue’. While there are paragraphs here and there that encourage roleplaying the overall feel is more like a character card for playing Descent than an actual character role to get into.
The DMs guide is a triumph though, at least in writing. There’s great advice in there on player types and typical troubleshooting and it’s helpful without being patronising, something that occasionally shines through in the Player’s Guide. I particularly liked the boxed out hints and tips, which are very human comments from the developers that give you more of an insight and connection to the game than much else that’s present.
There’s no real setting to speak of, as such and while much is familiar much is also different, different gods for example and different races, but this comes more under discussion of the rules.
Rules
Over all I think the rules are an improvement and a clarification from third edition and they have been streamlined and simplified, at the basic level, by a great deal. I can see this speeding up play and making things much easier for the GM in particular – prepping monsters and encounters is now much faster, but all of this simplicity comes at a cost of depth. Where D&D was more like a bag of lego bricks before – a little crude but you could put it together any way you liked, now it’s more like a plastic model. The pieces go together certain ways and you’re told how it should be. Everything is channelled, quantified, laid out as to how it ’should’ be and while you can fiddle around a bit you’re really only making cosmetic changes.
There is a massively heavy emphasis on miniatures and battlemats, though different parts of the book swing between saying their optional and implying that they’re essential. While one could easily enough convert the distances and areas back to feet rather than squares it is a pain in the arse to do so and a pain that they’re so heavily pushing the minis. I hate using minis and battlemats unless I’m war or skirmish gaming, I feel it detracts massively from the RP but I can see where the business decision comes in here, clearly the figures make the big bucks so anything that encourages their use has to be ‘good’. I disagree but then money talks in these instances.
Another thing that has effectively been lost is the capability to multiclass freely and easily. Now you spend feats to gain qualities from other classes but you are still pretty much stuck in your role and using these multiclass feats is ‘weak sauce’ compared to previous methods of doing so. While you can customise within your role and build to a couple of different specifications this felt stifling to my creativity when I was trying to create a character I really liked, especially at first level. Multiclassing was always an ad hoc solution to the problem of character customisation but it was still better than the solution being presented so on that score I’m not a happy bunny.
The role enforcement problem is made worse by the new skill system. You no longer have varying skill levels, you either have a skill or you don’t and that only gives you a +5 bonus within the area of that skill, this means a great deal more emphasis is weighed upon Ability scores and, even more importantly, level. Level rules everything now, giving bonuses across the board and the rewards for levelling are much greater than in 3rd Edition as well, what feels like excessive Ability score increases and a wealth of new powers.
I found the choices for races in the new book peculiar, to excise character types people like and are used to for the Dragonkin, Eladrin (Elves 2.0) and tieflings (but no Aasimar) seems a peculiar choice to me. The exotic and interesting is no longer exotic and interesting if it’s the default. It would have made more sense, to me, to retain the Half Orc, Gnome and to have the Warforged in there and to put these new ones in a follow up Player’s Guide – but then maybe that’s the point to put familiar classes and races in additional player’s guides to help them sell, if so that’s a touch cynical but perhaps good business sense.
In classes we lose the Sorcerer – the change in magic rules means the spontaneous caster is no longer needed as much (though a magic user with more lower power At Will/Encounter spells would simulate it quite well) but we gain the Warlord – a leader type – and the Warlock, a pact-based magic user. Again these feel like odd choices to me, better suited to expansion books than to the core book, I assume the Warlock is there to appeal to the MMO crowd but the Warlord I can’t particularly place, other than they perhaps wanted another ‘buffing’ class.
Feats are reduced in importance compared to the class specific powers and capabilities and many are, additionally, streamed by class themselves. In some ways this helps remove a problem of ‘feat bloat’ but on the other hand we now have many, many, many more categories which can bloat independently, all the different tiers of abilities and abilities relating to the Paragon and Epic levels of play (11+ and 21+).
Another metagame intrusion is the idea of ‘respeccing’ (sorry, retraining) allowing you to replace older, weaker powers with more powerful versions as you advance, effectively rewriting your character’s history and allowing you – if you’re careful – to maximise your potential every level by playing the system, playing the game rather than playing your character.
One ray of sunshine amongst all the metagaming and immersion breaking is the expanded concept of skill based encounters. These are now more of a creative chess game somewhat akin to the process of making an extended challenge in HeroQuest. Characters get to RP creatively and use their skills creatively to solve extended problems such as, say, tracking enemies through a forest or seducing a noble’s daughter. I like the idea as presented and see lots of RP opportunities from it but it also made me feel that in inexperienced groups the skill rolling would replace the RP and the natural back and forth of play.
Long term I can see problems with the approach that WOTC have taken in 4th Edition. While the game has been stripped back and rebooted and while the 3rd party market has calmed down there are now many more things that could suffer game bloat, rather than classes, prestige classes and feats we now have classes, paragon classes, epic destinies, at will powers, encounter powers, daily powers and multi-level equipment which means 4th Edition could end up sprawling out of control twice as fast as third edition did. The other problem is that even though the system is streamlined and simplified there are not twice as many complications, modifiers, exceptions and so forth which in their own way will slow everything right back down again.
Upsides
* Clean, crisp, readable.
* Honest effort to reach new gamers.
* Forward thinking approach to support.
Downsides
* Misguided attempt to engage MMO players.
* Returns to the relative constriction of Basic/2nd Edition
* Miniatures emphasis overwhelming.
Score
Style: 4 (Good but falls short of what’s expected of the industry leader)
Substance: 3 (All rules and no inspiration makes Jack a dull boy)
Overall: 3.5
Final Verdict
My score would suggest that I rate 4th Edition as slightly higher than average. This may not be revealing my views sufficiently. The Substance score is low (average) because these corebooks do not contain anything in the way of setting information or content past some discussion of dungeons and ruins. These three books represent a game engine and advice and little more. I am almost certain that the new limited three book setting productions will be excellent and that they will provide the substance that the corebooks lack.
In my opinion 4th Edition does deal with many of the flaws from third edition, but it also embraces others – such as metagaming and optimisation. This can be dealt with by a good GM but I have to assess the books from a position of relative neutrality, as such I can’t assume every group has a brilliant GM or non-abusive players.
While I have deep reservations about D&D Insider I hope it succeeds and while I have even deeper reservations about trying to beat the MMOs at their own game I do wish D&D 4th Edition and Wizards the very best of luck with it, especially in roping in new gamers. I hope to be writing for 4th Edition – it does make that job a lot easier – and Postmortem Studios will definitely be supporting it.
Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough
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Tags | d20, dark-fantasy, dungeons & dragons, wotc
I am somewhat of a purist, and therefore any game that is going to have Dragonborn in it as a starter race and interrupts in it a la Magic: The Gathering, should not be called Dungeons and Dragons 4.0; instead, it should be called “Magic and Misery” or “Ninnies and Non-Roleplayers”
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Well Al good luck with the only dungeon crawl thing. Because that is about all it’s good at now. You could also look at Warhammer if you are so interested in dungeon crawl. Because WFRPG actually gives you more than D&D4e does. Or rather it’s a good thing they took out the advanced part. You do need rules to simulate certain things in roleplaying. Otherwise we could just forgo combat and say putow putow for sci fi games and clink clink for fantasy. I hit you, no you didn’t, well there are no rules saying I didn’t! This is what they have done with Roleplaying which is why some of us are pretty upset. Again as pointed out above, it is considered THE RPG when in reality it’s a tactical boardgame, not much different than decent or heroes quest, or mordenheim.
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Unfortunately my group has decided that 4th edition is just a way to bump up the sale of minis. The play changes remove too much actual role playing, and as the article says, adds too much incentive to metagame.
It’s a sad day when the people behind the name “Dungeons and Dragons” have given up on the “RP” part of “RPG”. Why even bother with 4e when I have the minis with their own rule sets, MMOs that are more convenient, and a group of friends with all the 3.5 books, and a smattering of other game systems out there?
Sorry WotC, there’s nothing to draw your old fans back on board, and nothing to attract newbs who already get their fix in front of the screen.
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Honestly, 4th edition’s changes hurt me as a gamer. I enjoyed getting into 3.X due to the vast amount of customization and uniqueness I was able to display in my characters. 4th edition took all the character classes, shoved them in MMO roles, and balanced them to the point of unabashed homogenized ’sameness’.
I understand that they didn’t want any one class to seem ‘useless’, but if you played the game well, there wasn’t really a case for that, save that the 3.X fighter needed a bit of a strength bump.
The lack of skill ranks is just depressing, and the fact that it’s trying to suck up tall the World of Warcraft players is infuriating. MMO’s used to be trying to be computerized D&D, so why is it that now, D&D is trying to be a pen and paper MMO?
My group only plays 4E now, so I have to suck up my problems, and I hope when we get into some of the later game stuff I’ll find something to redeem my problems, but honestly, I don’t see that happening. Here’s hoping WotC decides to look at what a lot of their player base is saying, and attempt to fix it as quickly as possible.
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I do like it that the rules are pretty much hands off when it comes to RPing, so depending on the skill level of the GM, nothing really gets in the way of executing a scene. Also, if you add narrative aspects to the “skill challenge” system, like for example the players are free to dictate what exists in the world as they describe how they use their chosen skill to succeed in a given task, the game gets quite fun from an RP standpoint. I like how the rules focus ONLY on combat this time, like it should, and leaves the RP stuff to the GMs.
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GeoVaughan Reply:
December 20th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I agree. I was highly skeptical of 4th at first as an avid 3.5 player, and after looking at the books I was convinced of the exact same thing: that WotC was trying to be an MMO. But I just recently played a 4th ed game with a great DM who set up a fairly awesome scenario for our players, and everything worked beautifully. There was a good balance of die rolling and RPing, the DM let all of our character make independent decisions and adjudicated skill checks and die rolls on the fly, so that while I was chasing a would be assassin along the rooftops of the city our paladin was trying to apprehend one of his cohorts, and the swordmage escorted the ambassador safely to the city council. There were all the usual flubbed die rolls, humourous slip ups and awkward RP moments, but by the time we were done our party had come together, negotiated a deal to scout out an oncoming elemental army, and then successfully thwarted most of the assassins guild in their second attempt on the ambassador’s life.
I’ll admit that most of what made the game fun was the way our players and DM all came together and meshed our characters well, but the same could be said with 3.5. Roleplaying is still very much alive in 4th edition. In fact, with all but the essential rules pared away, I’d say roleplaying is even more open and free than before.
I think 4th edition comes off looking a lot more promising if you view the PHB rules as a set of starting points for playing the game, rather than boundaries. We’ve become so accustomed to the “a rule for everything” mentality from 3rd ed that we’ve lost the ability to imagine and build.
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i hate d&d 4e. my analogy would be that they (stupidly) have attempted to make a Cook make “all meals balanced in taste” (stupid ofc), and to do it in a format with no main meal…its basically one f****ed up malange of rubbish, trying to pass itself off as an RPG
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Immersion/reailty is going to be at the expense of usability and speeding up play and vice versa.
There are hardcore gamers out there who like more detailed combat. I think they had it right a long time ago. Basic D&D and Advanced D&D. I’m not sure how that would pan out as a business decision, though.
The skills system made sense to me as a way to streamline that part of the game. Although I’d give more than a +5 considering that is easily beatable by luck on a d20.
Roleplaying affected by the rules. I have a hard time believing this. If you are in a group that puts emphasis on plot, character development, relationships and dialogue…the rules won’t change that. And of course there have been people modifying and making up their own rules for the past 30+ years.
I was really disappointed that 3.0 wasn’t an open system considering where they had been going with character points in the Players’ Options books.
I’ve been tempted to write my own book on converting one or multiple new D&D systems to an open, classles system.
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I’ve been reading through the new edition and do not find it to my taste. I cut my teeth on AD&D and played through 2nd Edition.
The openness of the old system depended greatly on the ability of the DM to enforce or bend the rules depending upon the situation. I had many a few DMs that took the situations the players put him into and he dealt with it based on common sense (for a magical world) if it wasn’t exactly covered in the rules.
Yes, stabbing a sleeping dragon in the eye wasn’t covered exactly, so it would be up to the DM to figure out what happened and play it out.
That’s the beauty of PnP gaming, you aren’t tied hand and foot by a computer game engine.
I agree with the idea that 4th edition caters too much to miniatures and to the computer gaming crowd. Everything I have read in the books so far feels like someone has written out the gaming subroutines used in a computer based RPG.
If I ever play DnD again, I’ll be going to back to 2nd or 3rd edition.
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I have gotten my hands on all of the 4e books released so far, and read through them. While it is true the rules do not support much role play as such, this has usually been something supported by the DMs. O.o many of the supplements that have come out (especially a favorite short adventure of mine called “the last breaths of ashenport”) add to the rules, allowing for varied degrees of success on diplomacy and intimidation. :3 further, the campaign guides for Forgotten realms, and Eberron, as well as the Manual of the Planes, help introduce the feel that was missing in the PHBs.
In short the PHB and other core books were dry so as to allow for several different settings, each with a vast, rich history, without any accidental crossovers.
O-o Admittedly it does not fix the entire issue with the MMO feeling, but as long as the players are committed to character, and the dm is flexible, an enjoyable game is not hard to create. :3
it’s still not perfect, but it is more enjoyable than when it was first released.
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I have played Dnd for the Last 26 or so years and enjoyed every expansion of the game that was up until 4th Edition. I feel that in their desire to bring new blood to the game they have managed to alienate some of us old timers. I fell in love with the 3.5 mechanic and the flexibility that it offered with its multitude of customization choices.
I had no intention of ever converting to the 4th edition, but unfortunately I had to relocate my family to the other side of the US. I had hoped once I got to my final destination that I would be able to pick up a nostalgic gaming group who love 3.5 as much as I did. That didn’t happen after months of searching I have come to the realization that 4th edition is here to stay and unfortunately it is popular with the newer generations. So I joined a 4th edition gaming group, I still hold out hope that a nostalgic 3.5 edition group will rescue me from the hell that is 4th edition. I will not hold my breath.
This by no means meant to bash 4th edition, it just not the same game that I grew up with. Dnd has a special meaning for me the game rescued me from a life of mischief or serious run with the law. The taught me to use my imagination and allowed me to grow intellectually. Sappy and dramatic as it may be I see it as if I have lost cherished friend or family member.
Now that Paizo Pathfinder has come out with the promise of a resolving some of the issues with 3.5 will be addressed I eagerly hope that it draw a group of us who are disillusion with 4th edition and want to go back to days before.
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This really seems to me like an entirely different game, which, in of itself, is not bad. The problem here is tha WotC used the DnD license to pimp the thing, and now so many who play the game want to play the new version only, so it is harder to find folks to play 3.x with, which is really more my cup of tea. If WotC wanted to make a new game, It makes me sad that they didn’t give it a new name. I am sure, though, that fold who liked ADnD felt the same way about 3.0.
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hmmmm, I’m not really sure about all of this…
I was completely new to DnD when a group of friends asked if I wanted to join their 4th ed. group, so I really shouldn’t have much of a valued opinion, but I feel that 4th edition is good enough to serve, at least, as a fresh, faster way for people to get into the game.in the few games I’ve played, I feel that the rules have done their job well enough not to hinder play unless you choose to metagame or try to fit everything that can be determined by dice into a roll. we didn’t use miniatures, and it worked out fine. we have yet to use the non-combat-skill-encounter,, and it’s worked out fine. I’m happy with my character, and my friends are too, and DMing is a pleasure if you do it for the fun of starting a story, and seeing where the players go with it. if 4th ed. can hold my attention and give me a damn good RP experience, then I won’t say Boo against it over a few new player races that happen to give an interesting flair of strange, diverse looks, or the fact that it doesn’t shove a setting down your throat. to me, a game like what I’ve heard D&D is is an opportunity to have some fun with some friends, some dice, and a new world of splendor and adventure, and franky, that’s what I get out of 4th edition.
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I am a lover of D&D. I have been playing since the release of AD&D, but fell madly in love with the ease of 3 & 3.5E. Everyone is griping about how difficult the rulesets were for 3E and how many “bugs” it had in its mechanics. HELLO?!?!? IT’S D&D!! The main rules in my sessions are HOUSE RULES! I leave out the bothersome and hindering rules in the PHB and DMG. ANything that seems to restrictive on flow and fun gets tossed immediately… My groups has had WHOLE SESSIONS where we talked about what rules to keep, what rules to toss, and why! Now with 4E ( i just have to return them to BAM before I cannot get my $105 back) I have lost connection to this “free form” RPG. And what’s with the emphasis on minis?? God WotC, BEG us for money why don’t you?!?!? I hate minis because the ydetract from the use of my players imaginations. If I wanted restrictions (or 4E) I would buy us all copies of WoW and then we could all sit around AND WISH we could do somethings that were not put into the game engine!
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I got two words for 4th edition D&D Epic Fail. I was orginally excited for it. Then I read up on all the changes and such. So I decided my 3rd and 3.5 books are still good and it beat buying all new books for a new system I dont even want to try to understand. When I play D&D I play for entertainment not to mindlessily hack and slash and from what I read and what I been told thats pretty much all that you do. On the other hand when I DM I take a lot of time thinking a story for my players to enjoy. 4th just doesnt have what I need to enjoy myself. So back to my orginal statement Wizards of the coast you have failed, Epically.
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Anyone notice the article was perfectly right in saying how much fast the “bloat” would be in 4E? It’s gone up more than twice as fast. It’s been a little over a year and already there’s hundreds of paragon paths, over 1000 feats, over 4000 class powers, 5,000 monsters, and so on. It’s ridiculous.
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I really think that some of you aren’t giving it enough credit, saying that it lacks any kind of depth beyond combat. sure, it’s combat oriented, but what is there other than skill bonuses in any other version out of combat? as Antfinney says, there are House ules. I’m using some aspects from the 3.5 dm guide 2, and that seems to take care of careers and learning in a learn-y way.
furthermore, why is there complaint about crafting a story? it’s a mechanic to act out your stories: if the scene that you have in mind doesn’t have a direct correllation between the mechanics and your imagination, IMPROVISE! take leaps depending on what suits the story, ask fo checks that make sense. again, like Antfinney said, it’s a freeform game, no matter what the emphasis is on: USE that to tell the story you want to tell! are you really telling me that there is no way in which you can take advantage of the more fluent, easier to get right into ediion and change what you don’t like?
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I started with the red box basic, then skipped adnd 1st and went to 2n edition. I played 3rd edition only in the form of NWN. I love 4th edition a lot. I don’t think its an MMO copy. I think instead they tried to make as many players as actively involved in every situation as possible. As far as lack of roleplaying goes, there is more attention to the idea of roleplaying and creating cool stories than in any other previous addition. I like not having to say “My fighter swings his sword” every round. I like having mages that don’t hide in a barrel until they can cast their one spell of the day. I also think that we as niche gamers all develop strong attachments to the ways we first learned to play these games and dislike new products from companies that seem…i don’t know…kind of like they are trying to squeeze as much cash out of us as possible. I think that if this version of rules came out from a smaller company and was not associated with WOTC, people would say it was awesome. I love it and I like to roleplay. I love it and I like to GM. Its quick, easy and really gets to the essence of fantasy roleplaying. It can be simplistic at times, but it does so in a way that allows good gms and players to focus on the storytelling and action.
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Well I first played D&D from the white boxed set in the UK in 1977, (mainly CoC since then buy like most folks I like to paddle in many pools) and this is the first edition since pre-Advanced D&D that has me remotely interested.
I always felt that while I could handle the storytelling and immersion D&D combat felt fudged, too slow, lacking in oomph.
This edition still allows me to wave a story and when combat occurs to see it handled quickly in a more exciting way.
I do think the scenarios I’ve seen so far have been lame – nothing more than battleboard sessions… but surely that’s down to us DMs to manage. My games won’t be combat heavy – they’ll be character and story driven but it does mean I can more easily get new blood engaged in something that they can understand without D&D becoming their life.
My feeling is that nerdy D&D-elitist shmucks will probably always hate it, casual gamers will be able to enjoy it and ROLE PLAYERS will continue to ROLE PLAY.
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I started with the red box set for a little while then went straight into ad&d which me and my mates played for a few years then when 3rd came out we looked ad it and decided that it wasnt done properly, waited for 3.5 and was alot more pleased with that and we have been playing it since, we have only just started to try out 4th ed over a few sessions and in my opinion its no where near as good, but thats just because its new, theres limited material and a few things def need changing so were ganna stick with 3.5 and wait for 4th ed to get redone as at the moment it just reminds me of old school hero quest board game, its just a battlegrid with miniatures on it.
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Frankly I am disappointed with 90% of the comments here.
Did any of you /read/ the article?
Most of the opinions I have seen here are based of the gossip that the author tried to avoid.
Read the article and maybe try playing 4th Edition fully before slamming it down.
On that note 4e need’s some work, but I think that it is up too the players to facilitate that.
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I understand the negative criticism of 4e as it is a VERY different game than early versions. However, different doesn’t necessarily mean worse.
I was sold very early on with 4e because of the fact that it was different and fresh. It does heavily push miniatures more than 3e but anyone that played 3e with miniatures could notice a drastic ease of play vs running without. “Miniatures” don’t have to be fancy pieces sold by Wotc. They can be beads, coins, squares of cardboard with character/monster names on them etc.
There is not less-rp in 4e. Role-playing is something that you bring to the table yourself. The game rules in 4th cover it as much as they need to. How much or how little you rp is up to you. In every edition, there have been hack + slash games and there always will be.
I think that making the game more like an MMO is a cool thing in some ways. What I don’t like about it is that it is harder to play a game if you don’t have all the character roles covered. Sometimes someone may feel forced into a role to balance the group. It’s hard to play without a defender or a striker for example.
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When I read the 4e rule books I did it with an open mind, As I read the players hand book I felt like I was reading the World Of Warcraft manual, seriously. My gaming group played it for 1 month (we got 7 5hours sessions out of it) and we put it down and went back to 3.5. But now we play pathfinder, look it up its what 4e should of been its an upgrade from 3.5 to make the stuff that didnt work work and balanced the whole thing out.
4e sucks.
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4e isn’t a bad game. It just that I find 3.5 to be a more rewarding experience. 3.5 had problems. There were serious balance issues, tons of junk material (feats, prestige classes, spells, and items) that were just so sub-optimal that you would never use them, and many sub-systems (epic, incarnum, etc) were released in a single book and then ignored. Some of them, especially from the Tome of Magic, had incredible potential but were just so misbalanced that they weren’t viable.
But 3.5e gave you so much freedom. There were so many non-combat spells which could do incredible things from an RP perspective, great backstories, so many possibilities in creating a character and really gave you the sense that the world was at your fingertips. That is what D&D was to me, and 4e sharply cut back on it. I have a great 3.5 library and think it is the better game. I have no reason to go with 4e. Maybe I will be back for 5e, assuming there will be one.
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Well It’s been 18 months since I started playing it with the exception of 3 months from august till october. Still sucks. Even after the break I can not get into this game. Despite our DMs best efforts RP is almost dead when we are around the table, sure our blog is awesome, but why did we buy the books then(and yeah I got like 17 books at 35+ a piece)or sub to D&D insider? Could have stuck with anything at that point, marvel superheroes would have been as good.
For that matter we do combat just fine without the books on the blog. Which leads me back to my point…the books DO NOT lend to roleplaying. Even the people defending 4th ed say “just use your imagination” well I can do that with combat too so why buy a ROLE PLAYING game that is only about mini’s and tactical combat which I still find done as well in Warhammer. In fact warhammer has a rich history that they use in book. What is presented in D&D is …I don’t know they don’t describe much other than “If you want to be a dragon then be this character” -dragonborn…that tells me alot about nothing.
The point is you are buying a system that has a history and feel, if that is removed it is something else. Rolemaster has an OPEN system and says as much. They are upfront in the intro. Use ONLY what you want but we will provide you with info that fits our system. Meaning if you need to know how good a miner you are, it is there even if you are a wizard.(“Hey where can we find some ozmonium?”.”Well I just happen to have some knowledge about mining”)not the generic skill they have now.
Skill challenges are ridiculous. Apparently a high int anything knows all kinds of things about anything.
The quickness of character gen is gone once you have to build a new character of higher level. Getting your powers and feats to jive and still make an interesting person takes on 2 hours with the char gen doing all the math. Might as well go build a gurps or rolemaster char with all the trimmings.
This isn’t just old foggy stuff. If I wanted ridged rules and no RP I would go play guildwars. Even WOW has more RP built into it than D&D does now. I could play FF tactics just as well for tactical. The whole point of pen and paper games is using your minds eye.
IF some think that “i swing my sword” is how us old timers use to play before “tide of iron, tide of iron, tide of iron, tide of iron” Hey what are you doing? Oh yeah this combat was too long and you are out of dailies/encounters.” Then you are mistaken. But due to the power structure now, no one uses their imagination for solutions, instead will power ‘c’ work with situation a or is power ‘b’ going to be better? As we all wait for this person to complete their thorough analysis of the ENTIRE battlefield.
Before 4th ed…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”
” OK make an acro check and roll a d20 +1 to see if you hit with the surprise maneuver. If you hit I’ll see if she stumbles, you can try to grapple her at that point. Good thing you took off your chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver you would have had penalties”
Now. “I use guilding strike so she takes a -2 penalty to a def…how do I knock her out or make her stumble? What about a bonus?”
“well what does your power say? does it say knockout opponent or allow a bonus other than a -2 to a def?…No well roll the d20 to see if you hit. You took off your chainmail…good for you, now roll.”
K guys do you get it. The same imagination you tell us to use in RP we used in combat to get better effects than a fluffy power name with a sorta advantage in the description. You could do the same thing by telling the DM what you wanted to do. Granted you would have to see somepeople do that or have them suggest such an action could be possible, but you wouldn’t be confined either. It was up to the brainpower of the people around the table. Hopefully staying in charter.
My char Beothuk yells” Stormdancer use the table as cover and attack her legs! I’m going to have to have word with you about your name when we are out of this!” While he stand defensively parrying the incoming blow from the duelist.
See not too hard is it. I didn’t even roll a die and the combat I just wrote was more exciting than most of our sessions in the last 18 months of people not being able to remember what each power does. 4th ed is broken and so far with all the extra books put out very little has been addressed. I will say the have given a huge array of powers now, but people couldn’t remember what they had before nevermind now.
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I have tried to play and DM 4th edition for the last year. As a players, I felt very contrained. Even as new books came out, the character’s powers were essentially the same (and rituals just didn’t seem right). I miss playing a wizard where I had a large versatile spellbook (that with forthought, I can deal with any encounter..or not if I chose wrong).
As a DM, the grew to hate the system. First, a group with all the correct rolls rarely were challenged to the point of characters becoming nervous that they might not make it out alive. Also, the encounters were too scripted (by the need to challenge this group), as you needed to have several monster roles in each encounter. what ever happened to you meet 12 goblins (and you realized your first level group might be in trouble. I say scrap, and take your creative energy and give us new 3.5 or even 2 nd edition stuff.
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The game, IMO, caters more to people who are more concerned with optimizing and playing a board/card game interrupted by brief story narratives.
The mechanical system does NOTING to support roleplaying other then talking about “hand waving things as a DM”. Why not just hand wave everything then? Why even bother having combat rules?
Paizo – Thank you for carrying on the tradition of 3rd Edition.
-Cal
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I’ve been playing 4th ed for over a year with a group.
Most of us have been playing for over a decade, ith one new player who’s totally into MMO’s.
Needless to say, the new guy loves it and works the rules to optimum mojo.
I however am playing an Eladrin rogue (aka leather clad fairy that pokes people from behind) , my favorite class.Well, favorite in every other edition. I loved the flexibility of being a rogue in that if I could come up with a weird idea I’d just rock it. If you think of something you could probably get it done. Shooting from the hip throughout a campaign. In 4e, if you don’t have the power, you can’t do it. We’ve only done one unscripted thing in over a year, because the rules take out all flexibility. And skills are useless. As well as everything non-combat oriented because you need to max your combat to get to the next ‘role play’ opportunity. Rogues can’t sneak much (especially in the modules), anyone can do any of their skills the only purpose is sneak attack.
And get this, there’s a level 7 encounter power called ‘Sand in the eyes’, in order to come up with the brilliant idea of throwing sand in someone’s eye you have to be level 7… or ya know 6 years old on a playground. It’s all about the combat, and the rules of combat. Why even include rogues as a class ? Honestly, 4ed is a miss. I enjoy the company and the beers had at game a LOT more than the game itself.
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Well since my last post we decided to give pathfinder a go. Well. We all decided pathfinder is what the 4e should of been, we are starting to prefer it to 3.5. Maybe pathfinder is D&Ds future? anyone else tried it?
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Aurore Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Yes we tried 2 things. Pathfinder, and Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved. Both are excellent and both would have made a great basis for 4th edition. Now we play both systems together, using Monte’s spell system and pathfinder for most of the rest, though we will likely incorporate Monte’s feat system from iron heroes too.
Personally, I think pathfinder is the way to go. It is 3.75 as most call it, a distinct improvement on 3.5, with much better rounded base classes an streamlined rules, and all the fun and feel of 3.5.
4th ed is a shame to be honest.
The rule system changes in 4th edition make it ‘not d&d’. Thats the first crime and the least serious. You could just not buy it if that were the only issue.
However it isn’t. Wizards have abandoned the OGL, hence limiting artistic license to their own very limited imagination, but helping Paizo and 3rd ed supporters by preventing companies developint for 4th ed.
In addition they define D&D. By making 4th ed they have just screwed the whole system. Players have left the game or if you look at gaming sites like Mythweavers and Plothooks where you play by post, 3.5 games still after all this time outnumber 4th ed by 5:1. But it means that unless they scrap all this and bring out a 5th edition that is more traditional, then D&D under its own name is dead. Sure I will be playing Pathrinfer, and loving it, but I’d rather Wizards just sold the D&D name to Paizo or Monte and stopped screwing with the game that got me into RPG’s. They lost the moral right to do so in my eyes, all they have is the financial rights and theyre busy flushing that down the toilet.
The third crime is they messed up all the fiction and other worlds. In the past they had dropped Sigil, dark sun, ravenloft, everything except faerun and eberron. Ok At first I didnt like faerun much but people like Rob Salvatore and Ed Greenwood and many others over the years turned it into a highly detailed and living world. Now wizards throws it all away with their stupid points of light system.
What the hell? Points of Light? The entire idea is designed to break the world into tiny bits so that people can go back to 1st ed style dungeon crawling. We had mostly outgrown that. But they made a completely unrealistic world, destroyed all the faerun story lines, and of course ban any novels being written for the 3rd ed setting faerun.
WoC are a bunch of money grubbing vandals with no idea of game design and in the end too stupid to even be able to design a game that can fulfil their one dream – make cash. Because a crap game in a crap setting isnt going to cut it, and many of us already play WoW or other MMPORGS and dont sit round the table to play more of the same. No thanks Wizards.
Thanks Paizo and Thanks Monte for giving us other games. Lets hope Wizards go bust and a more desrving and respectful company gets the D&D license. Gary must be turning in his grave at the sight of 4th ed.
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Just a few thoughts on the “immersion” and roleplaying issues – -
In some ways, 4e is like the “static chess” game that James mentioned in his opening article. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it can be an enjoyable exercise in its own right, but it does tend to detract from immersion.
So many of the 4e rules deal with position, shifts, pushes, marks, teleports, transpositions, flanks and combination manuevers (between powers of different characters) that it’s almost impossible to track, understand, or use them without minis on a battlegrid. Once the minis are in place (together with terrain features, etc.) a whole range of combat strategies come into play. But it’s a little like chess. I find myself looking at squares and movement options and naturally start thinking in abstract terms. Visually, I’m concentrating on the game mat and most of my mental processing involves “looking ahead” just as I would in a standard wargame or chess match.
I am not independently visualizing the action the way I would if I were hearing a story. It’s a little like chess. When I play a game of chess, the last thing I’m think about are the medieval themes of the pieces.
What I’m suggesting is that 4e is almost TOO good at what it does.
When I DMd previous editions (mostly 2e) the mechanics were usally pretty raw. Boring, even. But as a DM, I’d try to spice it up by descriptive action. Instead of announcing that a monster had rolled a “miss”, I’d often say that it just barely missed, or that the claws raked so and so’s shield, or that he felt the creature’s hot breath just as the jaws snapped shut next to his ear, etc., etc.
We used a lot of the same concepts that 4e embraces – flanking and pushing etc., but it was more a matter of handwaving and discetionary calls by the DM and, as a DM, I had the power to fudge on all of that stuff in favor of whatever made the encounter more interesting, funny or exciting.
4e is so tactically tight, though, and we’re all so wrapped up in the mathematics of the manuevers and the potential combinations that emerge from the board, that much of that “flavor” seems to have been lost – the independent visualization of the events.
(It also doesn’t help that some of the “fluff” descriptions – especially in the core books – don’t make a lot of sense. For example, if I hit sombody with a power that causes their blood to boils and poisonous vipers to shoot out of their ears, I expect a lot more than 1d8 + CHA mod damage. But that’s a whole nother rant.)
I have had a lot of players say that the game is okay, so far as that goes, but “it’s not really D&D anymore.”
- another issue –
One the one hand, I really like the idea of the characters being able to go through multiple encounters without having to constantly recharge their spells and hit points (the so-called 15 minute workday). And I like the way that they are rewarded with action points for maintaining momentum. But that does tend to lead to a combat-intensive grind. There are plenty of ways to roleplay characters outside of combat, but it seems like those opportunities don’t arise as much when the PCs are trying to maintain their encounter pace.
The other thing that we miss is the ability to use spells and combinations of spells an items in creative ways – to create traps or get around obstacles or just to blow up buildings. It feels more like we’re either in combat or not, and when you’re in combat, then, no matter whjat else you’ve done, you play by the same set of rules. It is a little more restrictive.
I’m less concerned about the whole “multi-classing” issue than I used to be, now that more and more in-between classes are available (and getting a taste of some of the hybrid rules.)
… anyway, my experience is that the old-timers are almost all agreed that they want to go back to the older systems to recapture the “flavor” that they miss.
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I am a huge fan of the D&D line and have been playing since I was 7 but, now that 4th ed. came along, now everything is all combat and no RP. Along with the newest lack of RP, there is also an incredible unbalance of Monsters.
There used to be a time when kobolds were…well kobolds, they were weak and could be killed in a single hit, and couldn’t do a thing unless there were loads of them. Now I send five against a party of five and no onelives to tell the tale. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Dragon, once a feared monster of legend, can be taken out by a groupof lowlevel adventurers in a snap.
SkeithInus out
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I totally agree with you assessment so far.
Two questions:
1) Have you looked at all the new supplements out there for 4th?(the money-mongers at wizards have even gone up to PHB 3!!) do they fix anything?(I sincerely doubt it)
2) What do you think of FantacyCraft ?
Thank you for your time,
may the winds blow true upon the sails of your imagination
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PHB3 introduces much brokenness, which will help sales. The recent patch fixes the brokenness of the earlier PHBs, although there’re still a few loopholes.
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Please forgive my spelling, I am writing this on a BlackBerry and I suck at it. I play first edition Gygax. I loved the new look and play mechanics of 4th ed. So I took the plunge and got the core books. I play 4th ed. as a table top dungeon crawling boardgame for miniatures.The rules are great for a combat oriented hack and slash. I too found character creation a little stifled until I purchased the 2nd and 3rd phb. The system works great for a 32 year old geek like me who can buy a ton of books, terrain and figures.
I think the cash strapped player will snub WOTC and hit up Pathfinder. I like the power system where each character spell or attack is writen out like a magic the gathering card to be strategicly played during battle. I also like playing a first level wizard who can take a couple hits and do damage every turn. Playing a fighter who has colorful options during a fight apeals to me too. That being said. I loved the comments in this web discussion because I can relate to so much. I found the fully written out monsters and the static power system to limit a lot of my freedom with world and senario creation. I really have shifted from emphasis on roleplaying to emphasis on battle. I am very excited to check out Pathfinder. I haven’t heard a bad thing about the system from any player, old or new.
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Having never played any version of D&D before 4e, most people probably won’t care about my opinion. But I have to say, since the number one thing most people seem to hate is the MMO-ness of the combat and emphasis on powers and such, you should really have a talk with your DM about it.
Currently we’re playing a campaign designed completely by our DM. It’s in an entirely new world, with the same high fantasy of the D&D world and some steampunk influences. Regardless, we ended up in combat with a large mechanical spider covered in mirrors. After a few rounds of trying to figure out what to do to pierce its armor, and pretty much getting solar beamed in the face a few times (and almost dying a few times) our ranger decided to target a specific mirror on the spider’s front right leg. The DM (on the fly) said that the spider started leaking oil, so I tossed a torch at the oil, setting the spider ablaze and charring the mirrors. The encounter continued, but my point is that we were able to come up with some really cool ways to fight our fights, that weren’t pre-planned by our DM or anything. The combat has, so far, felt extremely dynamic and reasonably quick paced. The RP has been immersive and exciting as well, and each session leaves me wanting to start up the next one.
I can understand people not liking the skills system in D&D4e, and I can’t say that I’m too big a fan of it either. If I’m an assassin with a thievery of 11, I shouldn’t have a chance at failing simple traps (with a DC15). Our DM agrees and won’t always make us roll skill checks like that. It’s really up to your DM to give the players a fulfilling experience.
That said, I’m not trying to argue if 4e is better or worse than previous editions. I just feel like people should give it a little bit more credit and treat it with an open mind, instead of trying to compare everything to 3 and 3.5e.
Hopefully we’ll be able to try out Pathfinder sometime soon, though!
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For me, the main reason to stay away from 4e (although I would be interested in a skirmish game night using it), is not the complete lack of roleplaying. Although systems may offer more or less (4e) support for roleplaying, the amount of roleplaying is ultimately up to the DM and the players, as e.g. Logan has pointed out.
My main problem is that I cannot suspend disbelieve with this system. During the session I need to believe that somehow the world makes sense. And some of the power descriptions and effects make me sick with disbelieve.
Out of the top of my head an illustrative example would be “Blinding Barrage” (? Is that the name?), probably a 2nd level rogue power. It requires a missile or thrown weapon. So a crossbow or a single dagger suffices. With this power the rogue shoots/throws so often that opponents within some area are effectively blinded. With a crossbow…. or a single dagger….
You could probably fix this power (description) in several ways. But this is a more serious fix than some useless feat or overpowered prestige class. It is about the type of worlds that the developers (and by extension 4e DMs) aim to cater for. And I cannot believe in such worlds.
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Two Words- Tri Stat
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OK here we are 2 years in. Our game group has reformed and went to rolemaster. All my D&D friends love the system. I know it sounds like I am just here to pimp rolemaster, but the 8 people we have like it or at least 6 do. 1 says its too deadly(which it is in comparison to D&D) and the other thinks it isn’t realistic. He fell off his horse and was very injured. I don’t think he has ever fallen off a horse into a ditch in plate mail to see the real world effects that would have.
Even our hardcore DM has stopped buying the piles and piles of books needed for D&D. He says he can’t afford it. I haven’t seen PHB 3 to know how much is fixed, but if it takes 2 years to start fixing things you aren’t doing a good job. We did rolemaster today and our group has a guy using a gladiator net and crowbar as his main weapons and another guy who would rather use his grapple hook as a weapon. The GM allowed this and its working out great and makes the game enjoyable.
I suppose you could try to make rules for D&D or toss rules out to get these effects, but it doesn’t resolve a lot of the issues.
I like the comments about chess. That is exactly the problem we encountered. Everyone is doing the math for the best stacking bonus and no one is enjoying the story the DM put all the hours into it for.
I would say the hack and slash people should be delirious at how D&D managed to steal warhammer fantasy mechanics and put it under the big brand name of D&D so you can easily find people to play heroes quest with. There are tons of good boardgames out there right now and D&D has a brand recognition that any game would lust after.
Seriously go check warhammer fantasy from 2004 to see a good chunk of the rules used in D&D. But as we all know warhammer has always been a table top game first, so its no big surprise.
I figure D&D has about 2-3 years left befor ethey can’t cram any more white space and large font into their splatbooks and have to start over again.
SO take heart fellow travelers we may see a new and presumably better system by 2013. Though I won’t hold my breath on it.
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Okay, so I realize that anybody I reply to probably wont read this at anytime, but I have to say something. I can completely understand someone having a problem with the 4e system, or prefering to play a different system because they know and love it – that’s awesome. But for those of you who are complaining about the lack of RP opportunity and creativity in the game, I’m getting a bit sick of it. Yes, the core books are very cut-and-dry, rules related set ups, but that’s purely so you can add your own level of creativity to, and modify it to your own liking (just like what everyone does with any other version of D&D… hmm… how odd). D&D has always been a game of imagination and creativity, so if you can’t come up with a believable explanation for something, the only person you have to blame is yourself… and maybe your DM. This quote I found especially annoying:
Before 4th ed…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”
” OK make an acro check and roll a d20 +1 to see if you hit with the surprise maneuver. If you hit I’ll see if she stumbles, you can try to grapple her at that point. Good thing you took off your chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver you would have had penalties”
Now. “I use guilding strike so she takes a -2 penalty to a def…how do I knock her out or make her stumble? What about a bonus?”
“well what does your power say? does it say knockout opponent or allow a bonus other than a -2 to a def?…No well roll the d20 to see if you hit. You took off your chainmail…good for you, now roll.”
If you or your DM can’t figure out a way to do exactly that in 4e, then you have a problem:
Player:…”Charging I draw my mace while rolling under the table to swing at her ankle…I don’t want to kill her just incapacitate her”
DM:” OK make an acrobatics check – good thing you took off that chainmail before going to the tavern, thats a hard maneuver – you would have had penalties. Now, make a melee basic attack against her with your mace. If you hit, deal 2 damage (you are still probably going to break her ankle – it is a mace, afterall), and knock her prone. You can try to make a grab at that point.”
See, simple as pie. At-Will Powers are meant for when you’re in the middle of an open field facing one last enemy and you have no odd, creative options. So, instead of just swinging your sword at him time and again, you decide you want to take a huge swing – put everything into the attack and to hell with your defenses. Instead of the DM having to come up with arbitrary bonuses to attack and damage and penalties to defenses, you have something that states what those changes would look like. And just because the power gives a description of what the attack could look like, doesn’t mean it has to look like that – making your own descriptions is part of the D&D creativity of getting attached to your own character, and if I’m not mistaken the PHB even states that you should feel free to rename and redescribe any attack you use to fit your character.
I realize this has been a bit of a rant, and I’m sorry, but I’m sick of people trashing something that’s different from what you think the ideal is. Newsflash, we’ve all got different views of the ideal, and you’re giving people who haven’t even tried it yet preconceived notions that could keep them away from something they might truly enjoy. I don’t care if you don’t like it – WotC isn’t preventing you from playing 1, 2, 3, 3.5, Pathfinder, etc., and they aren’t sending ninjas to destroy your old books. I’m just asking that you at least give the game a reasonable shot, or don’t whine about it.
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Yeah but you still didn’t prove how it improves roleplaying from any previous D&D edition. People are too concerned about what power is going to be used next in the fluid tactical-ness of 4E. The rounds already long from people trying to min max their attacks for the ever changing battlefield would take even longer if they then decided to be creative and most DMs want you to stay within the rules…which means sticking with power types, not creativity.
It is a great tactical game, like Mordenheim, but it fails as a roleplaying game.
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Dailies and Encounters just feel forced. What is a “Dreadful Word” supposed to be? Too much of the crap in 4.0 is science, with the art slapped on afterwards. I dont care if the game isnt balanced, just have a competent GM and players who are there to have fun. Thats why I give up on 4.0, and leaving to play Pathfinder. Wizards seems to busy just killing off all their franchises
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*Snort*”I realize this has been a bit of a rant, and I’m sorry, but I’m sick of people trashing something that’s different from what you think the ideal is. Newsflash, we’ve all got different views of the ideal, and you’re giving people who haven’t even tried it yet preconceived notions that could keep them away from something they might truly enjoy. I don’t care if you don’t like it – WotC isn’t preventing you from playing 1, 2, 3, 3.5, Pathfinder, etc., and they aren’t sending ninjas to destroy your old books. I’m just asking that you at least give the game a reasonable shot, or don’t whine about it.”
What are you talking about. This is a review. The point of a review isn’t to get people to try something. Its to give a critique of the product so they can establish a rational on weather to buy a product or not on peoples account of the products.
If you don’t like the reviews you are entitled to your own review. That said telling people not to whine is whats wrong with the 4E people.”waah go play your 1,2,3X” The point isn’t to whine about old systems either.
People want to know if they should buy this product. Some people don’t have access to large gaming communities and generally have only their close friends they have coaxed into playing.
Especially if in a rural setting. So they need to be informed about the pros and cons of the new system.
I don’t have 100 bucks to blow on the core books so I was lucky our local game store had 4E sessions on wednesdays.
I played for 3 months while the owner pushed me to buy into it. Game store owners need people to like this. Its good for their sales. But it never fit very well.
A lot of the complaints are the same ones I heard from around the table. The Store owner said everyone loved it. Not from some of the grumbles outside of the store.
Love for the combat system at first level but not so much at level 6. If you have to generate a character at level 6 it is a big pain. Worse than a lot of other systems. For synergy reasons. Like someone else mentioned about stacking bonuses. Too much time on combat not enough on Role playing.
To each their own. I just want people who come across this article to know what they are going to experience. For me, it was not going to be worth forking out money on this tripe.
So I don’t think letting people know ahead of time what this is like is whining as you imply. Some of us have genuine reservations about the new system. At least if they do try it they can’t say they didnt get a warning ahead of time.
Less loss selling the books on EBay that way. Better off trying Savage Worlds or Gurps than wasting your money on something that doesn’t fit your usage of DnD.
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