Quietly Back to the Past (in spirit)?

[trollwad]

There are two design essays on the Wizards website that show that the mentality if not the rules of 4e are a bit more old school than 3.5e.

The first is called Dungeon Design in 4e. Many grognard types point out that the gigantic stat blocks and obsessive "CR matching" in 3.5E logically culminated in the Delve format and very set piece battles which reduced DM discretion and flexibility -- look at the 3.5e Ravenloft vs. its 1e predecessor. Many classic 1e modules such as the ship battle in Saltmarsh or the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun have flowing multi-room, multi-stage battles. This essay implicitly criticizes 3.5e for its static nature and its inability to have flexible plans of attack moving from room to room. It will be interesting to see the impact that this has on 4e modules. They may improve (from a Grognard's perspective).

The second is called "Points of Light" - it basically says that the implicit default world for 4e will be "points of light" in a world of wilderness -- i.e. you are safe within an hour of your village or a day of your city but beyond that, peasants should be scared. I scratched my head when I read this as wasn't this the same assumption for Karameikos (the default setting for Basic D&D)? For Greyhawk, you kind of have to read between the lines, but if you look at the population figures vs. the land area and compare those to medieval Europe where France alone had 10 or 15 million, and little England had up to 3 million at points in time vs. only 3-6 million for the Great Kingdom and Keoland, you can see that Greyhawk was a similar "Points of Light" implied setting. Does this mean that the sort of hyper-urban, magic shops on every corner implied by the magic item rules for 3.5e will be deemphasized? Will we see more outdoor encounters?

I'm sure that 4e rules will be a new system loosely based on 3.5e and thus will drift even further away from classic d&d rules but it is interesting to see that the default assumptions on how to run encounters and how the world is may be reverting back to the classic norms.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

The second is called "Points of Light" - it basically says that the implicit default world for 4e will be "points of light" in a world of wilderness -- i.e. you are safe within an hour of your village or a day of your city but beyond that, peasants should be scared. I scratched my head when I read this as wasn't this the same assumption for Karameikos (the default setting for Basic D&D)? For Greyhawk, you kind of have to read between the lines, but if you look at the population figures vs. the land area and compare those to medieval Europe where France alone had 10 or 15 million, and little England had up to 3 million at points in time vs. only 3-6 million for the Great Kingdom and Keoland, you can see that Greyhawk was a similar "Points of Light" implied setting. Does this mean that the sort of hyper-urban, magic shops on every corner implied by the magic item rules for 3.5e will be deemphasized? Will we see more outdoor encounters?

The "Points of Light" default setting has made me the most excited about 4e. I love the wild lands feel of it, the lawlessness.

Color me impressed.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Have you used The Wilderlands of High Fantasy? Very cool (and old school) "points of light" setting.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Many grognard types point out that the gigantic stat blocks and obsessive "CR matching" in 3.5E logically culminated in the Delve format and very set piece battles which reduced DM discretion and flexibility -- look at the 3.5e Ravenloft vs. its 1e predecessor.

According to a recent WotC quote, Ravenloft was designed with at least some of 4e's strategy in mind, so I don't think you're using a very good example here.

The second is called "Points of Light" - it basically says that the implicit default world for 4e will be "points of light" in a world of wilderness -- i.e. you are safe within an hour of your village or a day of your city but beyond that, peasants should be scared. I scratched my head when I read this as wasn't this the same assumption for Karameikos (the default setting for Basic D&D)? For Greyhawk, you kind of have to read between the lines, but if you look at the population figures vs. the land area and compare those to medieval Europe where France alone had 10 or 15 million, and little England had up to 3 million at points in time vs. only 3-6 million for the Great Kingdom and Keoland, you can see that Greyhawk was a similar "Points of Light" implied setting. Does this mean that the sort of hyper-urban, magic shops on every corner implied by the magic item rules for 3.5e will be deemphasized? Will we see more outdoor encounters?

I think people are making too much of the whole "Points of Light" thing. If you think about it, the description we have for that implied setting can fit with most 2nd edition and 3rd edition settings, including large stretches of the Forgotten Realms.

I also don't know where 3rd edition implied a hyper urban setting with magic shops everywhere. That feel certainly wasn't established in most of the adventures WotC released, and I don't see anywhere in the DM's Guide where it says an urban setting is the default. Even Eberron has large stretches of wilderness and many places where the "Points of Light" idea is already the assumption.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I love the current Points of Light description. After there are 17.33 splat books out for it, I'm sure some folks will feel differently about how much of a wilderness and wide open environment it is.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Are CR's gone? That'd be nice.

It seems like a lot of the developers are really taking a step back to look a the older editions of D&D.

The "run away and fight another day" mentality sounds like it may be returning while the "D&D math means we should be able to survive this" way of design may be going away.

That's cool. 3rd edition was set up so that the players always had the chance to win, assuming they didn't do something overly stupid. That's all well and good, but when the players caught on, they realized they were untouchable.

In the older days, there were some encounters you just needed to escape from. I liked that, because you never knew for certain which was which.

3e/3.5, to me, has begun feeling less like reading a suspenseful book, and more like solving a math problem.

Hopefully, 4e will be injecting a new level of uncertainty into the players, which is a good thing.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I love the current Points of Light description. After there are 17.33 splat books out for it, I'm sure some folks will feel differently about how much of a wilderness and wide open environment it is.

Simple solution: Don't buy them.

For the first time ever, I'm really going to make an effort to avoid all those unnecessary purchases and try to stick to the core as much as possible.

Previously, I compulsively purchased way to many books, and then felt like I had to include stuff from them to justify the purchase. I'm looking to break that habit with 4e.

 

[an_idol_mind]

3rd edition was set up so that the players always had the chance to win, assuming they didn't do something overly stupid.

Heh...tell that to my players after their 2nd level characters ran up against a 20th-level mage and his undead horde.

4e, like all other editions, will be what people made of it. CR will be gone, but there will be the new "1 monster per PC" or "X experience points makes a balanced encounter" guidelines. Those who don't understand that they are guidelines and not strict rules will still feel like the system is being too constraining.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Heh...tell that to my players after their 2nd level characters ran up against a 20th-level mage and his undead horde.

4e, like all other editions, will be what people made of it. CR will be gone, but there will be the new "1 monster per PC" or "X experience points makes a balanced encounter" guidelines. Those who don't understand that they are guidelines and not strict rules will still feel like the system is being too constraining.

That's true for home brewed adventures, but not for 99% of published ones.

 

[TerraDave]

Many classic 1e modules such as the... Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun have flowing multi-room, multi-stage battles.

And what fun that was! (at least for me, not sure about the players).

Is there a trend? Some more:

-While the art is not exactly retro, it is not particularly "dungeon punk" and seems a little more classic d&D.

-Fiendish royalty will be back in the monster manual.

-reference to mythology, thor, may be in PHB...this is very retro, as gods of this earth where basically the only available ones until the early 80s.

-big emphasis on fun, simplicity, lighter stat blocks, much less on designing for all possible combinations and situations, which seemed to be a 3rd ed mantra. (and responds to common grognard complaints, though as is often pointed out by the book AD&D was not that simple)

-hence no gnoll rangers in the presentation, this time it was all about taking-out trolls.