Last week at GenCon, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will, next May, be releasing the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The D&D website has full coverage of the announcement, with links to video of the GenCon seminar on YouTube.
I'm not going to rant about everything I didn't like in their presentation, and let's not even get started on how quickly they decided to invalidate all the books I've purchased this time around, but a couple of things they said caught my attention more than the rest. One of them was "subscription-based," and the concerns this raises are obvious enough. But far more worrying to me was this:
"We're defining the roles of the character classes. Like a sports team, you're going to know what your character, depending on what class he is, is supposed to do in encounters and in the game as a whole."
This does not appeal to me, not one little bit. I started playing D&D about the time 2nd Edition came out, and it whetted my appetite for roleplaying, but the rigid class definitions got stale the instant I first encountered a game which didn't have them. Starting with Palladium games (perhaps the stiffest system still on the market), and then moving to the likes of Storyteller, Legend of the 5 Rings, Earthdawn, the old d6-based Star Wars game, Ironclaw/Jadeclaw, and even Deadlands: I've seen a fair number of gaming systems, and learned a lot about what I like and don't like. And toward the end of the '90s, I had started working on a gaming system (and world) of my own, trying to gather together the good bits and avoid the bad from all the games I'd played.
D&D 3rd Edition was released in 2000. The core rules were pruned, multiclassing was simple and viable, and the skill and feat systems allowed a fair degree of character customization. It wasn't perfection, but nothing about it distinctly turned me off... and with the WotC marketing powerhouse behind the D&D trademark, it rapidly became the game that everyone knew how to play, which was the most important thing. Much as I resigned myself to Windows at about the same time, I've played almost nothing but D&D since 3rd Edition was released.
But now, as best I can interpret, we have been told that D&D is bucking for a slice of the WoW pie, and as such will soon become more rigid again. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe stronger guidelines won't actually hinder you straying off the path... but I think I'd like to prepare myself for things being just as bad as I expect.
I'm pulling my old project off the shelf. Expect updates.
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3 comments:
There is method in the madness. By encouraging specialist combat roles, the game ends up generating a quite enjoyable esprit de corps in which everyone is responsible for keeping their friends safe.
One friend of mine is currently converting one of our campaigns to D&D from Exalted specifically to obtain this effect and reduce infighting.
Simon:
That's well and good when you're playing with a fractious group of adolescents, and don't have the personal patience to pull them together. But I tend to be picky about who I play with, and when I decide to be less picky I try to provide leadership and encourage cohesion.
I understand completely what they're doing, and why, and they're achieving their goals admirably: characters within the four narrow archetypes are essentially interchangeable. You can "customize" from an extensive list of package options, but you're still fit for your class's intended role no matter what you do.
If I wanted that experience, I'd be playing Final Fantasy. I want uniqueness. I want interesting characters; numerical optimization is secondary, and only considered at all because it's a necessity for survival. I'm not here to fight the foozle and claim the sparkly, I roleplay for the stories that come out of it. Combat is part of an adventure, and I enjoy it, but it's not the only part, and rarely the best part.
And so I favor a flexible system where a single skill has a dozen applications and room for creative expansion, over one which gives me a stunning array of power attacks which all result in an equally dead opponent.
As a side note, on several occasions I've seen party infighting which was brilliantly roleplayed and enjoyed by everyone involved. I'm interested in gamers who can separate their egos from their characters, and enjoy doing so; these are the people 4th Edition appears to be leaving behind. For those who pre-design their progression through 20th level and/or get pissed off when they roll a 1: I'm sure D&D is better than ever.
The method that I see is marketing simon. Nothing more than appealing to the mmo's and other money making staples of gaming.
I am gonna miss 3.5 *salute*
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