I can't read 4e books like I could 3e books. You?

[Wisdom Penalty]

Here's the deal: I am enjoying playing 4e, but I can't curl up with a 4e book any more than I could curl up with a pile of roadkill. The books just seem so clean - too clean. Too formulaic.

3e books were infinitely better in this regard. I may not have used a snippet of Heroes of Horror, but I could flip through that book while trying to ignore the TV while my wife watched Dancing with the Stars, and be perfectly (well, almost perfectly) content.

1e, I would venture to suggest quite strongly, possessed the highest number on the "readability" chart. Gygaxian English was just awesome to digest. It taught hordes of us a new vocabulary, sparked interest in history and literature, etc. Gary could take three pages to explain one topic and only have 4-5 lines that actual mattered insofar as game mechanics were concerned.

I get the new design philosophy, I think. 4e books seem to be for support around the table while, you know, gaming. Things are relatively easy to find, ordered, and organized.

There's a part of me, however, that dearly misses the extraneous prose to be found in the earlier editions. (I haven't got the FR stuff, so maybe that's different.)

Since the books are not readable (to me) in a leisurely sort of way, and since WotC killed my beloved paper version of Dungeon and Dragon, I find myself flipping through older books and novels in the hopes of finding something to read instead of staring at the TV.

Anyone else notice this? Do you miss the "old style" of dense text and writing? Or do you prefer the cleaner, organized manner of the current edition?

WP

 

[Irda Ranger]

Anyone else notice this? Do you miss the "old style" of dense text and writing? Or do you prefer the cleaner, organized manner of the current edition?

I think my current experience is a fairly topical and unique one. I am currently reading both the Rules Cyclopedia and the 4E books for the first time each. So I'm getting a dual "initial impression" from both the old style and the new.

They're both kind of frustrating, just in their own way. 4E is boring as heck. I can't read it for more than a page or two before taking a break. I slogged through the combat chapter and just skimmed the class powers - I figure I'll read them when I need to know them. Reading the RC is much easier, in the "curl up on the couch" kind of way, but while reading the RC I am trying to learn the rules, and I have to extract two sentences worth of rules from a page of text. It sure makes learning the rules kind of hard.

So I see the problem, but not the solution. They're both well written in their unique ways, but the writing serves different ends. Sort of how the Oxford English Dictionary and The Iliad are both great, but reading them is hardly the same experience.

 

[knightofround]

I totally agree with you. However, I think that's largely due to the type of supplements they've released so far.

Adventurer's Vault reads alot like Arms&Equipment to me. Campaign setting books read pretty much the same, although the smaller amount of text is painfully obvious. Decreased word count has been great for crunch, but not for fluff. Adventures read like adventures...and thats all we have to go on right now.

I think we have to wait for WotC to release a supplement that is a 4E analogue to "heroes of horror" to truly judge if all 4E is formulaic by nature. Which will probably be awhile because all the splatbooks and campaign settings are higher on the priority list....sigh.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think my current experience is a fairly topical and unique one. I am currently reading both the Rules Cyclopedia and the 4E books for the first time each. So I'm getting a dual "initial impression" from both the old style and the new.

They're both kind of frustrating, just in their own way. 4E is boring as heck. I can't read it for more than a page or two before taking a break. I slogged through the combat chapter and just skimmed the class powers - I figure I'll read them when I need to know them. Reading the RC is much easier, in the "curl up on the couch" kind of way, but while reading the RC I am trying to learn the rules, and I have to extract two sentences worth of rules from a page of text. It sure makes learning the rules kind of hard.

So I see the problem, but not the solution. They're both well written in their unique ways, but the writing serves different ends. Sort of how the Oxford English Dictionary and The Iliad are both great, but reading them is hardly the same experience.

I sort of agree. 4E books read like a technical manual and the RC, despite being an awesome collection of basic mechanics,really is overly wordy for the rules it presents. When I curl up on the couch for some rulebook light reading I grab the Moldvay Basic and Expert sets. Mostly the same rules as the RC with much less padding.

 

[Ulrick]

I actually like reading the 4e books, especially the DMG. I agree, however, that the 4e are the "lightest reads" of all the editions.

I love reading 1e books because of the Gygaxian prose. I love the fact that I was using i.e., q.v., et al, when I was in 6th grade and knew what they meant. Those 1e books were written at a higher grade level than the current books.

Most 3e books were good, like Heroes of Horror, but I just got tired of all the mechanics--and those stupid notebook lines in some of them.

 

[Rechan]

Meanwhile I could never curl up with a 3e book. They felt like homework. A lot of words that didn't say anything all that interesting to me. This was universally true, with perhaps the exception being Heroes of Horror and a few Eberron books.

But then, I never, ever read a gaming book cover to cover, page by page. It's always a very eclectic "jump around, reading the parts I am interested in the most" and "Use as a reference tool".

Honestly, if I wanted to curl up with a gaming book, I'd pick up a White Wolf book, what with all the fiction crammed in everywhere.

 

[MerricB]

I think you can quite easily curl up with a copy of the DMG from 4e; all the good writing seems to have gone in there.

I don't know if the MM or PHB have ever really been good to read in earlier editions. Certainly there have been sections of them that are good, but lots and lots of boring stats or spells and the like...

Cheers!

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I just couldn't read 3e books period, the writing and the way the books were printed literally made my eyes hurt.

With 4e, their not fluff oriented books, but I still find myself curling up with them. Since the cleanness of the mechanics makes it so I generate absolutely tons of different fluff, campaigns, characters, etc. by quickly reading different mechanics.

My personal favourite fluff books are Cthulhutech and WoD for reading.

 

[Snoweel]

I'll first say that mechanically, I love 4e. It's the game I tried to houserule 3e/3.5e into (and I loved 3e/3.5e)

But the core books are uninspiring where in previous editions ideas flew off the page at me.

That said, I believe 4e is the best edition yet and Dragon and Dungeon magazines are still brilliant - immediately useful and inspiring.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think you can quite easily curl up with a copy of the DMG from 4e; all the good writing seems to have gone in there.

I don't know if the MM or PHB have ever really been good to read in earlier editions. Certainly there have been sections of them that are good, but lots and lots of boring stats or spells and the like...

Cheers!

I have to disagree with the good writing in the 4E DMG. There are some great ideas and concepts but they could have been communicated a lot better. There is a lot of good advice on how to conduct things at the gaming table, and more of that than any previous edition but its crammed between page upon page telling me what FUN is, what is not FUN, how to increase the FUN factor in the game because nobody could possibly have any FUN with another rules set.