TSR Releasing Dugneons & Dragons 4th Ed. RSN, Collective Yawn From Audience
So does anyone else actually care about D&D 4th edition? I’ve gotta admit, this is probably the least worthwhile thing that’s popped up on my media radar.
The conversion over to 20 base play was a big thing. 3rd Edition actually involved a lot of changes to make the game more comprehendable to players just starting to play.
(and this went over well, albeit irritating to anyone currently playing with the somewhat easier if higher learning curve 1st edition rules)
But that’s what you get when a bunch of technical folks design a math system for doing something. High learning curve with a fairly efficient method of accomplishing your goal. I’m sure that’s worse for sales.
So what do you get with the new shiny 4th edition, aside from new cover art?
Apparently, a lot of “Warcraft”-isms. Fancy names for things that have been around, if not codified in the “official canon” since the inception of the game. When they’ve made an official class called “Warlord” (see here) I don’t hold out much hope that this’ll be a meaningful release.
Remember, I don’t need to even *buy* the book to play the game anymore. The rule set, when reduced down to a bunch of D20 rolls, fails to need much explanation. And really, do you need to buy loads of manuals for a game that’s basically made up on the fly by the storyteller? Or in advance, for that matter… but they’re still doing the heavy lifting. The reference material is only marginally relevant.
Hell, I don’t even like the whole “ability and feat” thing. It adds in too much fiddly stuff to remember, detracts from the story, and at the end of the day doesn’t help much… this type of thing works for CRPGs because the computer is remembering everything for you.
When I have to actually track all sorts of things, try to figure out what a character needs the “lockpicking ability” instead of just having a single quick chart for the rogue class…
In short, I think I’ll go run a game without any extra cruft, just the base stats to roll against, and see how that goes to test this hypothosis that it’ll work smoother.
Until next time.