Blogfade? Kinda...
(I started writing this blog entry months ago. I would start, then stop, then restart and edit, wait and repeat. Now with a new edition of D&D being announced and worked on, maybe it’s time to take a few to write again.)
What has happened to the blog?
I’ve lost interest in playing D&D, especially 4E. I haven’t bought a book since the first year 4E came out. Actually I have only bought the first 3 books and 1 module. Any other 4E books I own were gifts.
That alone should be the one piece of information WotC would see (because I doubt they read this blog).
The Valley campaign went probably six or so sessions more than what I blogged.
It just became harder as time went along to get motivated to write about them.
(And if you’re wondering what happened to my campaign; we stopped at level 17 as things got on a larger scale, plot-wise, were opening up about great evils awakening and all that.)
I quit playing D&D entirely about 6 months ago.
In the end the socializing that came with the game just wasn’t enough to put the effort into making the campaign or even updating characters.
While I’m sure some would blame WoW, I don’t. I played EverQuest off and on for a while and I still played D&D.
To me the blame lies solely in the utter lack of fun I had with this iteration of D&D.
Updating my PC’s turned into a time-consuming chore.
Get a new magic item? Update your math.
Go up an even level? Update your math.
“Why not use their online character builder?”
To put it bluntly – fuck no.
WotC designed a game that has so many pieces that you need to either spend an hour checking your math or pay WotC money to help you with your PC. What a convenient racket.
My first desktop computer was a Packard Bell. And PB computers were junk. If you had a problem with one of their systems, because they were junk, you could call and have them help you. Then one day they wanted to start charging you for them helping with their piece of shit computers!
I’m not paying a company money to fix something they broke.
Then there is the encounter design process.
Ok, I kind of liked being able to design special things about encounters to make them unique.
That is one thing about 4E I’ll give credit for.
But when it comes down to it, combats were over complicated.
Combats should not take more than 15 minutes to complete unless it was designed to take that long.
I played Star Fleet Battles. That game is known for excessive rules and complications and combats taking 2 hours when it came to a 2 versus 2 ship fight. The rule books were thick…and they had nothing on D&D 4E.
If it takes so much effort to design an encounter…then you’re just setting yourself up for a railroad campaign.
If I spend 2+ hours making 2-3 combats, you can bet your ass I’m not wasting those encounters if I can avoid it.
So hello railroad campaign and goodbye random encounters.
But when 4E came out, and it doesn’t seem that long ago (that would be because it wasn’t), I was looking forward to it…a lot.
I was let down…a lot.
4E has earned its rightful place on the bottom of the D&D stack.
Yes, as much as I disliked AD&D 2E, 4E is a worse version.
When 4E was released a friend of mine claimed that they were borrowing too heavily from World of Warcraft to get young players into it.
I agree and disagree with him. The game isn’t totally like WoW, but there are some definite similarities that can not be ignored (everyone has special abilities, WoW’s cooldown abilities vs. 4E’s encounter/daily abilities, trash mobs called minions).
D&D has evolved over time to adapt to the gaming community, and MMO games and other computer/console RPG games have had an effect on D&D.
I don’t consider that a bad thing, but I think they’ve gone too far to mesh the technology into the tabletop pen and paper games.
Technology should be a help, not a requirement.
4E turned D&D into a D&D Miniatures game with more math and dice.
Role-playing became secondary. They even attempted that abortion of a concept of skill challenges…for role-playing, making actual role-playing pointless because what you said didn’t matter, only the roll you made when you shut your mouth.
D&D, in any of its incarnations, was never perfect. It always had tweaks that people felt were needed. It always had poorly designed aspects of it. But those were often easily dealt with by the wave of DM’s hand.
4E was such a disappointment that it has kind of put me off D&D entirely.
I haven’t played in six months and I don’t miss it.
I don’t want D&D to emulate online games.
I don’t want D&D to integrate a computer into the pen and paper.
I don’t want D&D to be a role-playing version of Magic: the Gathering. (How many of you used cards to represent what powers you used? When you used a power did you put the card in a pile or did you “tap” it?)
Maybe I’ll play 5E, but it would have to be something amazing and very different from 4E.
If I were the person in charge of 5E, there would be many staff replacements. I would suspect no one involved in original 4E design would have a job.
D&D4E was not D&D at all.
It was just an “ok” rpg with a D&D skin.
Ironically there were a lot of games like that in the early 90’s, until Magic: the Gathering came along and cleaned them off the game table.
If you want to contact me, my e-mail address is on this blog page somewhere.
Or if you’d like, you can talk with me on the Alleria server, horde-side.
Just do a “/who bobob” and you’ll probably find me…usually at the auction house making tons of gold for no reason other than to say I have tons of gold.
What has happened to the blog?
I’ve lost interest in playing D&D, especially 4E. I haven’t bought a book since the first year 4E came out. Actually I have only bought the first 3 books and 1 module. Any other 4E books I own were gifts.
That alone should be the one piece of information WotC would see (because I doubt they read this blog).
The Valley campaign went probably six or so sessions more than what I blogged.
It just became harder as time went along to get motivated to write about them.
(And if you’re wondering what happened to my campaign; we stopped at level 17 as things got on a larger scale, plot-wise, were opening up about great evils awakening and all that.)
I quit playing D&D entirely about 6 months ago.
In the end the socializing that came with the game just wasn’t enough to put the effort into making the campaign or even updating characters.
While I’m sure some would blame WoW, I don’t. I played EverQuest off and on for a while and I still played D&D.
To me the blame lies solely in the utter lack of fun I had with this iteration of D&D.
Updating my PC’s turned into a time-consuming chore.
Get a new magic item? Update your math.
Go up an even level? Update your math.
“Why not use their online character builder?”
To put it bluntly – fuck no.
WotC designed a game that has so many pieces that you need to either spend an hour checking your math or pay WotC money to help you with your PC. What a convenient racket.
My first desktop computer was a Packard Bell. And PB computers were junk. If you had a problem with one of their systems, because they were junk, you could call and have them help you. Then one day they wanted to start charging you for them helping with their piece of shit computers!
I’m not paying a company money to fix something they broke.
Then there is the encounter design process.
Ok, I kind of liked being able to design special things about encounters to make them unique.
That is one thing about 4E I’ll give credit for.
But when it comes down to it, combats were over complicated.
Combats should not take more than 15 minutes to complete unless it was designed to take that long.
I played Star Fleet Battles. That game is known for excessive rules and complications and combats taking 2 hours when it came to a 2 versus 2 ship fight. The rule books were thick…and they had nothing on D&D 4E.
If it takes so much effort to design an encounter…then you’re just setting yourself up for a railroad campaign.
If I spend 2+ hours making 2-3 combats, you can bet your ass I’m not wasting those encounters if I can avoid it.
So hello railroad campaign and goodbye random encounters.
But when 4E came out, and it doesn’t seem that long ago (that would be because it wasn’t), I was looking forward to it…a lot.
I was let down…a lot.
4E has earned its rightful place on the bottom of the D&D stack.
Yes, as much as I disliked AD&D 2E, 4E is a worse version.
When 4E was released a friend of mine claimed that they were borrowing too heavily from World of Warcraft to get young players into it.
I agree and disagree with him. The game isn’t totally like WoW, but there are some definite similarities that can not be ignored (everyone has special abilities, WoW’s cooldown abilities vs. 4E’s encounter/daily abilities, trash mobs called minions).
D&D has evolved over time to adapt to the gaming community, and MMO games and other computer/console RPG games have had an effect on D&D.
I don’t consider that a bad thing, but I think they’ve gone too far to mesh the technology into the tabletop pen and paper games.
Technology should be a help, not a requirement.
4E turned D&D into a D&D Miniatures game with more math and dice.
Role-playing became secondary. They even attempted that abortion of a concept of skill challenges…for role-playing, making actual role-playing pointless because what you said didn’t matter, only the roll you made when you shut your mouth.
D&D, in any of its incarnations, was never perfect. It always had tweaks that people felt were needed. It always had poorly designed aspects of it. But those were often easily dealt with by the wave of DM’s hand.
4E was such a disappointment that it has kind of put me off D&D entirely.
I haven’t played in six months and I don’t miss it.
I don’t want D&D to emulate online games.
I don’t want D&D to integrate a computer into the pen and paper.
I don’t want D&D to be a role-playing version of Magic: the Gathering. (How many of you used cards to represent what powers you used? When you used a power did you put the card in a pile or did you “tap” it?)
Maybe I’ll play 5E, but it would have to be something amazing and very different from 4E.
If I were the person in charge of 5E, there would be many staff replacements. I would suspect no one involved in original 4E design would have a job.
D&D4E was not D&D at all.
It was just an “ok” rpg with a D&D skin.
Ironically there were a lot of games like that in the early 90’s, until Magic: the Gathering came along and cleaned them off the game table.
If you want to contact me, my e-mail address is on this blog page somewhere.
Or if you’d like, you can talk with me on the Alleria server, horde-side.
Just do a “/who bobob” and you’ll probably find me…usually at the auction house making tons of gold for no reason other than to say I have tons of gold.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 12:47 PM
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