No Response

Well none of our group received an e-mail from WotC asking us to be play-testers.

That kind of sucks, but what can you do?

They only chose 50 non-RPGA play-testers that they picked randomly from their Gleemax forums. That stacked the odds against everyone.

I obviously don’t like the random choice route, but it certainly saves WotC employees from having to read through thousands of applications. Using 50 people isn’t enough, and having them all be random sounds like a plan for disappointment. Hopefully they’ll take that time they saved and put it towards making a good game engine.

Granted it’s their problem if they pick moronic yahoos to play-test, but it’s still “our” game they’re taking the risk with.

Sour grapes? Possibly, but I have a reasonable fear that what will be released as D&D won’t be D&D to me. Or perhaps I’ve become a grognard D&D player who has become too old of a gamer that views things with an eye of “it’s not as good as it used to be”.

I already have no intention of running the new Forgotten Realms any longer.

Nor am I a big fan of playing a FR module whose results mean nothing when the next FR novel comes out.

In fact, it’s probably for the best that we’ll never finish the Cormyr: Tearing of the Weave modules. I didn’t care for the small bit of module we played. I have no explanation for specifically why I didn’t like the module; I just couldn’t “get into” it. Perhaps it was the concept that we were just along for the ride while the story played out.

That’s probably a lesson for all DM’s; let your PC’s actions have long term consequences if they merit them.

So I’m thinking homebrewed campaigns are the way to go for us, or, if I’m feeling ambitious, the Kingdoms of Kalamar.

It’s not like we have an option. You have the royally hosed up and ever-changing excuse for what they call the Forgotten Realms, or you can play in Eberron where swords and sorcery fantasy has been replaced by sci-fi posing as swords and sorcery fantasy, or you can make your own world where things work as you see fit.

Still nothing released about the Digital Initiative intrigues me in the slightest. I bought one Dragon Magazine and zero Dungeon Magazines during Paizo’s run because I had no interest in it. So what would the DI give me that I could use? A 3D computer display of my character? At $10 a month, I think I’ll just paint a figurine instead. Maybe they’ll give a non-magazine price, but I’m not holding my breath.

The changes to wizard classes I’ve read a little about seem “eh” to me. They’re giving wizards foci (like wands and staffs that you see in movies) and removing most of the need for spell components. But let’s face it, when is the last time you worried about mundane spell components? In this case, WotC is just doing what the rest of us have done already; hand-waived material components.

I am definitely intrigued by how they are going to implement changes to initiative. The system I have in my head of what I think they are going to do makes “realism sense” but probably won’t speed the game up and it requires people to do simple math (double-digit addition can cause some people’s head to explode). I know 19 + 16 is 35, but there are too many people out there who need a calculator for it and not all of them are mouth-breathing junior high dropouts.

WotC is promising to make multi-class caster classes viable. I’m curious to see how they attain that without just making up new classes like the duskblade. I just don’t see it happening without a major rework of how multi-classing works.

At first, the few released tidbits of information were interesting and struck upon a few of the things I have felt needed correcting in 3E.

But the more recent information released has me worried that the game is being worked on by people wanting to rip the game apart and make another game that vaguely looks like D&D but really isn’t, then put the D&D stamp on it, call it D&D, shove it down your throat, and then stand back and wonder why you resent them.

To me it looks like they aren’t trying to tweak D&D 3E to make it run more smoothly, they’re rebuilding the game from the ground up and implementing what they think would make D&D better. And that would be all fine and dandy, if their ideas of making D&D better matched mine.

Right now my biggest 4E fear is that the people who think that Eberron was a good idea, are the same people making the calls for the new game design.

As you can see, as of this writing, I’m back on the pessimistic side of the 4E pendulum.

But maybe in a week or two my opinion will swing back.

If you’re one of those people who think that what they are doing to the D&D cosmology is a horrible thing, just remember this; it’s all fluff. You can put the inner planes back into your game and probably not even affect anything. If you want the Great Wheel of alignment planes back, I see no reason why you can’t do it. If you want the Blood War to continue, the only thing holding you back is you. It’s just information that you can change so long as the game mechanics don’t rely upon the information given.

If I want to play in the Realms as I remember them, very little is actually stopping me as it’s just a campaign setting.

To me getting rid of the inner planes, changing how demons and devils act, and so on is just a continuation of everything else I’m seeing with 4E, the designers seem to have no care about how the game previously worked so long as they get a good product in the end.

Unfortunately what a “good product” is depends on everyone’s opinions. And I’m seeing those making the good products as people a little out of touch with gamers like myself.

Just go ahead and label me a grognard right now I guess.