Fourth Edition

Fourth Edition…man…

It feels like yesterday when I picked up the 3E book at a local hobby store and took a chance on yet another new version of my all time favorite game.

With the exception of the original white box OD&D I believe I have played every incarnation of this game and thoroughly enjoyed each one, though some more than others.

Paul, a friend of mine from long ago introduced me to the basic game way back in 1985. I was hooked immediately. It appealed to me in a way no other game had so far, and debatably ever since.

Between Paul and I we had a so-so grasp of the rules, but sufficient enough to get by on to have plenty of fun. Later when I moved to another school system for high school, I heard some future friends talking about D&D. So within a week of moving away from my only friend who played Basic D&D, I found a whole new group of friends to play the next level of the game, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Towards the end of high school AD&D 2E was released. I gave a good go at embracing it, but I just couldn’t keep up with the deluge of books coming out for it. My paycheck just wasn’t big enough.

Later almost everyone learned to simply stop buying anything from TSR because they were producing too much junk while other companies were producing better and more enjoyable games. That gave me a kind of freedom to play the game again without having to worry about a book “arms race”. Eventually I found a stable group and started having fun with D&D all over again.

To me 2E was possibly the worst edition of D&D of the created five so far released (OD&D, BD&D, 1E, 2E, 3E – counting 2.5 and 3.5 as just revisions). By the end of 2E, we were more or less casually house-ruling everything because the game’s core just wasn’t capable of dealing with what we wanted. We would only use magic and poison saves, ability score checks for almost everything, and handing out arbitrary XP awards rather than worry about the way it was supposed to be done by the rules. All in all 2E was not an improvement to the game.

Then I picked up the 3E PHB shortly after it came out. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The rules had changed so drastically that I had to unlearn the way D&D had been to understand the new and alien design. But as we figured out this new game, we realized that this version improved or fixed everything we had given up on with 2E.

At that point I had a revived faith in D&D and began buying every book that came out for the next year or so. WotC could do no wrong.

Then something changed. Too many books were being released that just didn’t interest me, so I stopped my “buy it all” phase and adopted a more skeptical view. Then not much later 3.5E came out and Hasbro had bought out WotC.

Coincidence? I think not. I, like many others, saw this as Hasbro’s first money grab to get back some of their money from the WotC buyout.

That’s when I knew the new golden era of D&D was over. I understand the need for a business to be profitable, but I’m also wary of companies taking its customers for granted.

I could easily have been wrong about that. I know I’m a cynic, but you can’t help but see the evils of corporations when you watch the evening news and see story after story about corporations like Enron making you pay for not being a millionaire. Whether deserved or not, I started being wary of WotC under Hasbro.

Last year the rumors of yet another new edition of D&D coming out began. I paid attention to some of them while ignoring the rest of them as a “sky is falling” paranoia. Some of them made sense, others not so much. I took it all with a grain of salt, for a while.

Then Code Monkey Publishing lost their license to continue doing their excellent work with the E-Tools program. That concerned me, but didn’t anger me. I heard rumors that WotC was looking into doing some web-based software to make characters and more. If it worked, it would be better overall. And in spite of my statements above about evil corporations, I thought that WotC would probably have better quality control over the program.

So I let it go, but didn’t forget about it.

Then several companies started abandoning d20. That didn’t bug me until I read from Kenzerco that they would be using their Hackmaster rules for Kalamar, and leaving d20. That put me “on notice” and I began to listen to any rumors I heard both online and in person. I also checked around the various blogs of some people in the industry, and they were concerned, but not overly so.

In hindsight I feel that they might have known more than just rumors, but weren’t divulging them for fear looking foolish had they been wrong, or possibly breaking a confidentiality agreement.

Next was the whole debacle with Dragon and Dungeon magazines. It seemed that half the D&D community was up in arms and ready to abandon the game. I was concerned but nowhere near as much as everyone else.

It seemed that everyone was saying this was the final herald of the coming of 4E.

I didn’t say they were wrong but I had a secret hope from a tiny rumor I heard; what if Hasbro is looking to sell D&D off?

What if D&D had not been as profitable as Hasbro had expected and had chosen to sell it and make a quick buck and divest itself from an underperforming subsidiary? Maybe then the game would have one less layer of management to deal with, and a slight less pull to increase profits at any cost. (Once again my anti-corporation paranoia takes over.)

Then on last Thursday the announcement came.
I was wrong.
I hate when I’m wrong.

…

Initially I was just a shade less than pissed.

I felt that 3E had not been given its full lifetime and this was just another stunt to dole out dividends to shareholders. Maybe had 3.5 not been released, maybe there would not have been any big issue with a new edition, but they did and now we’re going to be forced to buy books again.

After the initial impact was over I began to think about a variety of things, both pro-4E and anti-4E.

(Though remember that I only have so much information to go on, and any of it could be way off. If you watch the same 4 videos on YouTube, you’ll have all the information I have.)

Pro: They promise to reduce the rarely used and needlessly complicated rules, like grapple.

Con: I have been very disappointed with many of the recent modules from WotC (Ravenloft, Cormyr, and Undermountain). Some of those same people working on 4E.
Addendum: I’ve listened to the latest episode of the D&D podcast and they mentioned that most aspects of the recent modules were done by those not directly dealing with 4E. This possibly goes back 2 years as well.

Pro: They have a goal to reduce the immense size of the current stat blocks. I’m really hopeful on this one, but I have a feeling that feats and skills are going to take a hit because of it.
Wondering out loud: Will they reduce feats, or possibly remove them, and instead give classes options to do A or B as they go up in level, similar to how rangers are currently (ranged or two-handed attacks)?

Con: That Baker fellow who designed Eberron is one of the designers of the new game. I just hope that the lead designers realize how much Eberron hate is out there and don’t allow anything from that worthless campaign to seep into the new design.
Yeah, I know my Eberron hate is getting old, but hey my preferred style of D&D is, and always will be classical Western European swords and sorcery.
Wondering out loud: Perhaps they will less push the campaign worlds on us in the more campaign neutral books? Something AD&D 2E did right was making campaign specific monster manuals.

Pro: They promise to make every single level of play to be just as fun as what they call “the sweet spot”, which to me are levels 5 to 10. If they can succeed in this, that would be an immense and great fix. Though I’ve read that Fireball might be drastically changed, which might make Dale cry.

Con: So many books I now have are going to have to going to be nearly worthless. Well at least I didn’t buy Complete Champion.

Pro: Potential foreshadowing from previous episodes of the D&D Podcast shed light on what could be a good concept; having a class level able to use spells of that same level to help reduce confusion of the word “level”. Basically it means that a level 1 caster would cast level 1 spells, a level 7 caster would cast level 7 spells, and a level 15 caster would cast level 15 spells. All you need to do is smooth out the spell list and it would work pretty well, though it would cut out the available spells to take at each level by at least half.

Con: The D&D minis game is going to be revised as well, but they are only going to go back to a couple expansions ago, and with a few exceptions they aren’t going to update cards from older sets. My hope is that they create new versions with updated stat blocks and allow people to use the older minis. If that were the case, then the pain of the revision to that game would be very minimized.

Pro: Reducing the utterly complex nightmare of high level combat that gets so bogged down that it slows to a horrid crawl. I have complained about this many times on this blog. I remember right before the biggest fight we had in the WLD where each PC had at least half a dozen individual buffs plus another half a dozen group buffs with one PC at the center of an Anti-Magic Sphere. Huge chunks of time were killed just dealing with buffs. A simpler system is required.

Con: Always a problem to me; changing simply for the sake of changing and designers putting their own spin on how they think things should be. About a year ago Mike Mearls, one of the main designers on this project, created an alternate rust monster that gradually wore down your weapons and armor rather than the instantaneous way it is now. Why?; because it’s no fun to lose your equipment in a dungeon crawl. Heaven forbid that adventurers face any danger in a dungeon that doesn’t involve hit point loss. The logic behind that change rings too close to losing equipment in a MMORPG.

Pro: Greyhawk is out; Forgotten Realms is in as the common setting for the game that is. I’ve never really been into Greyhawk as much as the Realms. So it’s more of a flavor thing than anything else. Even the Living campaigns are changing (not that I play them).

Con: The “Digital Initiative”; we pay WotC a monthly fee to get web content and use some online applications they’re setting up. I guess it’s more up to how much this will cost will be, but I’m not hopeful. From the booing I heard on one of the D&D 4E GenCon videos, I’m not alone. I’m hoping those boos keep the design team on the straight and narrow of giving the customer what they want and not turning into something you’d see coming from Hard Eight in the Knights of the Dinner Table.
There’s a rational fear that D&D is going to turn into another World of Warcraft or EverQuest, and I share those fears.
Though, potentially the Digital Initiative could turn out to be a good thing. But hey, I’m one of those guys who can see a silver lining in a dark cloud, or a dark cloud in a silver lining.

I could keep going on, but it would get repetitive. There is still too little information out there to really get a good grasp of what is happening and what is going to happen.

So for right now I’m going to be hopeful, but still be wary.

I do not want this to be a return to the days of 2E. Hopefully the designers in charge will keep their eyes and ears open for our fears, concerns, and approvals.

Now the question is - do I want to try to get in on the play-testing?…