The flattening of Dungeons and Dragons

[w_earle_wheeler]

I love miniatures, but I think WotC is making a smart move by moving to counters for now.

Here's hoping they don't start releasing blind packs of collectible tokens.

Crap, now I know it's going to happen.

 

[fumetti]

Now if 4E would ditch all the miniature-scale maps...

Seriously, all we need is a blank map and some erasable markers.

WOTC's obsession for having a miniature-scale map (and the tokens are also that scale) is what forces published adventures to seem restricted to just a few combat encounters. After reading a few 4E published adventures and then rereading some 1E, BECMI adventures, I see that 4E just isn't able to commit space to all those smaller encounters or even have many optional encounters (which would mean pages of maps, etc, to content players could just skip past and never play)--and those really helped the older "modules" to be much broader.

Funny how 4E has fewer encounters but commits more pages to maps...

 

[Mapache]

WOTC's obsession for having a miniature-scale map (and the tokens are also that scale) is what forces published adventures to seem restricted to just a few combat encounters. After reading a few 4E published adventures and then rereading some 1E, BECMI adventures, I see that 4E just isn't able to commit space to all those smaller encounters or even have many optional encounters (which would mean pages of maps, etc, to content players could just skip past and never play)--and those really helped the older "modules" to be much broader.

No, it has nothing to do with maps. The reason 4E adventures have less fights in them is because of a fundamental difference in design philosophy. 4E battles are designed to be tactically richer, and as a result they take more real time to play out than battles in early versions of D&D, so they built the game around having less of them. Instead of a dungeon where you repeatedly kick in the door, kill a few dudes who pretty much only differ by hit dice, then do it again, in 4E you'll have maybe three different areas with opponents that will respond by engaging the players in a more complicated battle that spans the zone and takes an hour of real time to play out. Small encounters in 4E aren't worth playing out as fights because they're too easy to present a challenge, but they would still consume too much time to run. Earlier editions had a sort of ablative model of challenge, where each fight consumed long-term resources from the party, while in 4E the challenge level is very much tied to what you're facing as a single encounter. This is also why random encounters are gone in 4E; in order to be interesting, they need to be real fights, which means taking an hour of time on something that's a distraction from what your current adventure is supposedly about, and that's a big chunk of your typical gaming session.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Flat? I think I want to avoid flying monsters due to the complex rules. I don't think I've ever seen a good set of flying rules in any edition of DnD.

You can show elevations pretty easily on a flat battlemat, as long as you're dealing with mountains (no caves, no buildings).

 

[delericho]

Heh. My game never actually made it to 3D - both because it was never possible to get the 'right' mini for everything, and because it was always so expensive to get even a representative sample.

Here's hoping they don't start releasing blind packs of collectible tokens.

I very much doubt there would be a market for them. It's just too cheap and easy to make your own. (That's what I did for my Shackled City campaign, and it worked a treat.)

 

[Keefe the Thief]

There were lots of games 'back in the old days' that ended up using cardstock 'chits' with the numbers on them - - shake em up and pull one out of a sack, box, etc. Were were forced to use that method for a couple RPGs at times.

We just used dice flattener back then. You spray it on, and voila, 2d.

WOTC's obsession for having a miniature-scale map (and the tokens are also that scale) is what forces published adventures to seem restricted to just a few combat encounters. After reading a few 4E published adventures and then rereading some 1E, BECMI adventures, I see that 4E just isn't able to commit space to all those smaller encounters or even have many optional encounters (which would mean pages of maps, etc, to content players could just skip past and never play)--and those really helped the older "modules" to be much broader.

All roads lead to rome older-editions-did-it-better-land.
But how many ds did they use?

 

[Ryujin]

Heh. My game never actually made it to 3D - both because it was never possible to get the 'right' mini for everything, and because it was always so expensive to get even a representative sample.

I found it rather inexpensive to purchase a number of generic figures, to represent the various creature roles. I started with a bunch of different generic undead. Deathlocks, Deathlock Wights, and Hobgoblin Zombies worked well. Then add in some Eternal Blades and Cliffwalk Archers for soldiers and artillery. Lothbound Goblins and Goblin Sharpshooters make for some good generic smalls. After that I bought a couple of the boxed sets, which got me a good spread of figures for characters. I built on that, buying the odd large figure as I needed them.

It's a big change from the 1e days when a single lead would cost $3.00-$4.00, then have to be painted. Generally we only had figures for player characters, because of that, with cardboard cut-outs and six-sided dice standing in for creatures. I would rather not go back to that.

 

[JeffB]

Frankly, as much as I love 4E, I'd be very happy if they continue to "flatten it" to the point where there are NO "Ds"


IOW- I'd prefer the necessity for a grid, and physical representation of everything to go away. I understand why some people prefer that element in D&D, but I've always been a fan of letting the imagination do all the work, and a simple enough game that does not require much more than the occasional sketch on paper for clarification.

 

[Nightfly]

You didn't even mention the worst example of this phenomenon: the fact that the Essentials version of Gelatinous Cube is called the Gelatinous Square!

That really proves the point. Or at least it would, if I hadn't just made it up.

 

[Dice4Hire]

We just used dice flattener back then. You spray it on, and voila, 2d.

Wow, what swingy combat, always roll a 20 or a 1.