With every new edition of DnD there is always a fair degree of soul-searching among the fans as to what exactly DnD is and if/how new version adheres to its basic essence.
As a long time DnD player who also plays a number of other games ranging from table top wargames over LARPs to Euro-style board games I want to offer my thoughts as to what the DnD is and why 4th edition seems to be good evolution of it.
I will argue that the DnD experience is best described as the immersive, story driven, multiplayer skirmish game with a creative moderator.
The above is a bit of a mouthful but I will try to elaborate.
First of all, I want to talk about the multiplayer skirmish game part.
From the very outset the combat was at the core of DnD. No published adventure that I know off culminated in PCs doing any of the following dramatic things:
- Engaging in a trial/debate where their powers of persuasion and the information/evidence they accumulated during the adventure will help them win the day
- Unmasking a murderer, traitor or a criminal from the pool of the NPCs
- Resolving a complicated social situation/intrigue
- Successfully avoiding and/or deceiving their enemies (to escape the imprisonment/deliver the message/destroy one ring etc..)
or really anything else that is not:
- Facing the main adversary (and possibly a number of his minions) in a skirmish level combat.
This is not to say that the above events never take place in a DnD game. Investigation, intrigue, deception, stealth etc... all can play the part of the DnD adventure but they are in secondary role, either as the preparatory action (something that needs doing in buildup to main end-combat) or as story-based reward, that features in the aftermath of the main adventure (now that you have defeated the Big Baddie you can go back and clear the charges against your father).
The fact is therefore that the core action in the DnD game is a group of individually played characters engaging in combat against the NPCs led by the Dungeon Master. This was true since the very beginning of DnD and remains true today. To see just how much it is true one can take the core books of whichever is your favorite edition and compare the amount of space devoted to combat and combat based abilities, to amount of space devoted to any other activity PCs are engaged in.
Sometimes people make a claim that heavy preponderance of combat based rules somehow stems from the inherent nature of combat as more mechanical then other sort of interactions. This is manifestly false.
In a game that is centered around social interaction and influence it would be very easy to develop elaborate system of reputation points, social standing rankings and social maneuvers (blackmail, seduction, boycott, alliance etc...) and buttress those with their own array of classes, abilities and feats (Courtesan class is excellent at information gathering and quick reputation attacks but suffers from steep social advancement curve and has generally low "reliability" score etc...)
In a game that has a strong stealth/avoidance element one could likewise have awareness points, distraction attacks, elaborate distance and illumination rules etc...
Similar argument can be made for any other dramatic action (chases, wilderness travel etc...)
Game that is interested in a universal recreation of dramatic/epic stories would give equal, or at least comparatively equal, space to all the above. DnD does not and is therefore, since its earliest days, a combat game.
This should not be taken as a criticism any more then saying that the Bang&Olufsen makes audio equipment and not sport cars is a criticism, it is just a clarification of what the core of DnD is.
However, saying that the DnD is *just* a table top skirmish game (with or without minis) is clearly not enough. There are very real distinctions to be drawn between DnD and games like Mordheim or even Descent/Hero Quest. The distinctions between DnD and a usual skirmish/table top wargame are the following
- DM + group of players structure replaces player vs player (or team vs team) [This is to an extent replicated in games such as Hero Quest, Descent etc but even there DM-figure is set up much more antagonistically to the player group then is usual in DnD]
- A single player is focused on playing a single figure.
- The game is persistent in that results of one "session" directly affect those of the next one. In particular there is a venue for character advancement and development. [This exists to a rudimentary degree in the "campaign" style wargames, but nowhere near the degree at which it is present in DnD. Also, number of battles in an average wargame "campaign" is usually orders of magnitude smaller then the number of skirmishes in an average DnD campaign]
- The game is driven by a relatively immersive narrative which sets and "explains" the relative importance of the given skirmish. The narrative is so important to the game as to warrant a number of secondary rules (skills and utility spells) to allow players to interact with it. [Most non abstract games have a narrative of some sort, from the very flimsy narratives of the modern euro-style board-games to very rich narratives of things such as Avalon Hill's "Republic of Rome" and Game Workshop's "Warhammer" universe games. However, between persistence, personal level of play (one player - one character) and a good DM, DnD narrative can be considerably more immersive then that of any other war games]
Together, these factors give you the DnD experience.
DM + Party structure makes sure that the game is not nearly as adversarial as a regular wargame making it into a stronger social/bonding experience. The moderated adversary also allows for prolonged campaigns with significant advancement (most wargame campaigns suffer from the spiral of death - as one opponent gets advantage, campaign advancement rules tend to increase it).
The lowest possible scale of the play (one character per player) makes it possible for players to specialize in their rules knowledge which together with DM as rules adjudicator allows for a degree of rules intricacy that is step or two above most other tabletop wargames.
The scale also heavily contributes to the high immersion level, which further contributes to the game both by being directly enjoyable and by providing in-game non mechanical rewards to the players for participating.
Therefore, I repeat my claim that the DnD is an immersive, story driven, multiplayer skirmish game with a creative moderator, and that all the evolution of DnD through its 5-6 editions was always based on that premise with any other consideration being very much secondary.
Before I proceed to argue that the DnD 4 as we know it now very much follows this trend and improves on its predecessors I want to make a few points as to what the DnD is not and why.
- First of all - and almost obviously - DnD is not a simulation of anything resembling the real world skirmish combat, or for that matter any other real world situation.
Even if one disregards the obvious addition of spells and monsters the DnD combat from its basic premises to the tactical realities has never resembled the realistic skirmish fighting. From the abstract hit points, through the functioning of the armor, over the low to non-existent penalties for fighting multiple opponents to the disregard of actual weapons and techniques used almost all tropes of DnD are rather deliberately non simulationist.
I claim that this is a deliberate decision because making a more simulationist combat system would infringe on the goal of providing a persistent skirmish combat based campaign. This is because real life skirmish combat (and any semblance thereof) is either rather deadly or rather boring. Significant advantage in equipment or numbers will favor one side so much as to make the game tactically uninteresting and a well matched fight will expose even the most experienced side to the risk of death that is unacceptable if a campaign is to take place over any significant number of such combats. Reason for this is that the real life combat is very much a binary proposition where the single "successful" hit either kills the opponent or sends them into a death spiral of bleeding and injury.
Obviously, in a game with one throw even the 9:1 odds favorite has a 10% chance of losing and seeing as loosing is a campaign ending proposition that ruins the character bonding and immersion that are central to the DnD experience this is unacceptable.
Solution is to increase significantly the number of meaningful exchanges in a single combat so that (small) advantage that the PCs have can consistently come through. For example, player with 9:1 odds in any given throw has 97% chance of winning the best of 3 game contrary to 90 % chance of winning the single throw. Thus the rules can reduce the advantage the PCs have *in any round of combat* - making the game more interesting - while the increase in the number of rounds assures the low chance of actual defeat. This, however, can only be accomplished by fundamentally changing a nature of combat from its realistic "one hit wins" to a many round attrition battle best characterized by the DnD hit-point system. (This incidentally is also the reason why the low level play was always considered very deadly despite the fact that relative advantage of the PCs over their opponents was really as big if no bigger then at higher levels - the small HP pool simply did not prolong combat long enough to smooth out the statistics)
This is a reason why DnD never had and never can have realistic combat and why no game can simultaneously aspire to realistic combat and to persistent characters.
- On the similar note, DnD is not an attempt to recreate (in game form) the major tropes of fantasy/adventure literature.
While it is quite obviously inspired by heroic fantasy DnD is too closely specialized to be any sort of generic fantasy story telling system. Most of the fantasy literature (including ironically most of the DnD-branded novels) feature significantly less combat then an average DnD campaign. Part of the reason is that in a book combat needs to be kept close to its real life level of deadliness in order to maintain its narrative punch. More important reason is that tactical decisions of skirmish combat are much more interesting when experienced then when re-told. (Source of dreaded "let me tell you about my character" syndrome). Hence most of the fantasy classics rely heavily on the sort of actions (stealth/avoidance, wilderness travel, social conflict etc...) that are distinctly secondary in a DnD game, or at the very least mix them heavily with such combat as they depict.
If DnD were to become a game expression of classical fantasy narratives it would have to (as argued above) provide rules for all these classic fantasy tropes to the complexity that is on par with its combat rules. It does not and so we can safely conclude that re-creating classic fantasy is not DnD's primary goal.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, DnD is not strictly speaking a "Role Playing Game" in a sense of being particularly interested in players exploring the personalities of their characters.
This is a controversial statement because it is indisputable that DnD, with its immersive gameplay and first-person jargon allows players to role-play their characters. However, in edition after edition there was never a trace of mechanical, or even verbal encouragement for them to do so. Reason for this too is very simple - the role playing is a fairly introspective activity that will inevitably lead towards individualistic behavior. Entire genre (standalone LARP) is built around this feature of role playing and the fact that with very small initial setup the players can effectively entertain themselves through exploring the relationship of their character with those of others. While immensely entertaining for a night of LARPing everyone knows how this sort of individualism can ruin the DnD campaign. Not only is the cooperative skirmish campaign very difficult to pull off or even motivate for a group of 4-5 people with well developed personal motivations and agendas, but, more importantly, handling the multiple of well developed characters over a persistent campaign becomes practically impossible job for any but the most experienced DM.
In conclusion, makers of DnD, smartly, do not encourage role playing emphasizing instead the teamwork and tactics. DnD thus remains not a role-playing game but rather game during which you can role-play, provided that is not too disruptive to the game itself.
My conclusion from here is obvious. DnD 4 builds strongly on the very basis of the DnD franchise and represents significant improvement to what were always DnD fundamentals.
The base skirmish game is enhanced to be more dynamic and involving. Persistence of the game is re-confirmed through more meaningful level progression.
DM based play remains intact as does the immersive nature of the game. One can argue that the secondary rules that help immersion will get better then ever before (social conflicts etc) without becoming so complex as to rival the rules of the core game.
As for placing simulationist, narativist and role-playing demands on the game, as I said elsewhere, less you demand your stereo to toast your bread, the less frustrated with it you are liable to be.
As a long time DnD player who also plays a number of other games ranging from table top wargames over LARPs to Euro-style board games I want to offer my thoughts as to what the DnD is and why 4th edition seems to be good evolution of it.
I will argue that the DnD experience is best described as the immersive, story driven, multiplayer skirmish game with a creative moderator.
The above is a bit of a mouthful but I will try to elaborate.
First of all, I want to talk about the multiplayer skirmish game part.
From the very outset the combat was at the core of DnD. No published adventure that I know off culminated in PCs doing any of the following dramatic things:
- Engaging in a trial/debate where their powers of persuasion and the information/evidence they accumulated during the adventure will help them win the day
- Unmasking a murderer, traitor or a criminal from the pool of the NPCs
- Resolving a complicated social situation/intrigue
- Successfully avoiding and/or deceiving their enemies (to escape the imprisonment/deliver the message/destroy one ring etc..)
or really anything else that is not:
- Facing the main adversary (and possibly a number of his minions) in a skirmish level combat.
This is not to say that the above events never take place in a DnD game. Investigation, intrigue, deception, stealth etc... all can play the part of the DnD adventure but they are in secondary role, either as the preparatory action (something that needs doing in buildup to main end-combat) or as story-based reward, that features in the aftermath of the main adventure (now that you have defeated the Big Baddie you can go back and clear the charges against your father).
The fact is therefore that the core action in the DnD game is a group of individually played characters engaging in combat against the NPCs led by the Dungeon Master. This was true since the very beginning of DnD and remains true today. To see just how much it is true one can take the core books of whichever is your favorite edition and compare the amount of space devoted to combat and combat based abilities, to amount of space devoted to any other activity PCs are engaged in.
Sometimes people make a claim that heavy preponderance of combat based rules somehow stems from the inherent nature of combat as more mechanical then other sort of interactions. This is manifestly false.
In a game that is centered around social interaction and influence it would be very easy to develop elaborate system of reputation points, social standing rankings and social maneuvers (blackmail, seduction, boycott, alliance etc...) and buttress those with their own array of classes, abilities and feats (Courtesan class is excellent at information gathering and quick reputation attacks but suffers from steep social advancement curve and has generally low "reliability" score etc...)
In a game that has a strong stealth/avoidance element one could likewise have awareness points, distraction attacks, elaborate distance and illumination rules etc...
Similar argument can be made for any other dramatic action (chases, wilderness travel etc...)
Game that is interested in a universal recreation of dramatic/epic stories would give equal, or at least comparatively equal, space to all the above. DnD does not and is therefore, since its earliest days, a combat game.
This should not be taken as a criticism any more then saying that the Bang&Olufsen makes audio equipment and not sport cars is a criticism, it is just a clarification of what the core of DnD is.
However, saying that the DnD is *just* a table top skirmish game (with or without minis) is clearly not enough. There are very real distinctions to be drawn between DnD and games like Mordheim or even Descent/Hero Quest. The distinctions between DnD and a usual skirmish/table top wargame are the following
- DM + group of players structure replaces player vs player (or team vs team) [This is to an extent replicated in games such as Hero Quest, Descent etc but even there DM-figure is set up much more antagonistically to the player group then is usual in DnD]
- A single player is focused on playing a single figure.
- The game is persistent in that results of one "session" directly affect those of the next one. In particular there is a venue for character advancement and development. [This exists to a rudimentary degree in the "campaign" style wargames, but nowhere near the degree at which it is present in DnD. Also, number of battles in an average wargame "campaign" is usually orders of magnitude smaller then the number of skirmishes in an average DnD campaign]
- The game is driven by a relatively immersive narrative which sets and "explains" the relative importance of the given skirmish. The narrative is so important to the game as to warrant a number of secondary rules (skills and utility spells) to allow players to interact with it. [Most non abstract games have a narrative of some sort, from the very flimsy narratives of the modern euro-style board-games to very rich narratives of things such as Avalon Hill's "Republic of Rome" and Game Workshop's "Warhammer" universe games. However, between persistence, personal level of play (one player - one character) and a good DM, DnD narrative can be considerably more immersive then that of any other war games]
Together, these factors give you the DnD experience.
DM + Party structure makes sure that the game is not nearly as adversarial as a regular wargame making it into a stronger social/bonding experience. The moderated adversary also allows for prolonged campaigns with significant advancement (most wargame campaigns suffer from the spiral of death - as one opponent gets advantage, campaign advancement rules tend to increase it).
The lowest possible scale of the play (one character per player) makes it possible for players to specialize in their rules knowledge which together with DM as rules adjudicator allows for a degree of rules intricacy that is step or two above most other tabletop wargames.
The scale also heavily contributes to the high immersion level, which further contributes to the game both by being directly enjoyable and by providing in-game non mechanical rewards to the players for participating.
Therefore, I repeat my claim that the DnD is an immersive, story driven, multiplayer skirmish game with a creative moderator, and that all the evolution of DnD through its 5-6 editions was always based on that premise with any other consideration being very much secondary.
Before I proceed to argue that the DnD 4 as we know it now very much follows this trend and improves on its predecessors I want to make a few points as to what the DnD is not and why.
- First of all - and almost obviously - DnD is not a simulation of anything resembling the real world skirmish combat, or for that matter any other real world situation.
Even if one disregards the obvious addition of spells and monsters the DnD combat from its basic premises to the tactical realities has never resembled the realistic skirmish fighting. From the abstract hit points, through the functioning of the armor, over the low to non-existent penalties for fighting multiple opponents to the disregard of actual weapons and techniques used almost all tropes of DnD are rather deliberately non simulationist.
I claim that this is a deliberate decision because making a more simulationist combat system would infringe on the goal of providing a persistent skirmish combat based campaign. This is because real life skirmish combat (and any semblance thereof) is either rather deadly or rather boring. Significant advantage in equipment or numbers will favor one side so much as to make the game tactically uninteresting and a well matched fight will expose even the most experienced side to the risk of death that is unacceptable if a campaign is to take place over any significant number of such combats. Reason for this is that the real life combat is very much a binary proposition where the single "successful" hit either kills the opponent or sends them into a death spiral of bleeding and injury.
Obviously, in a game with one throw even the 9:1 odds favorite has a 10% chance of losing and seeing as loosing is a campaign ending proposition that ruins the character bonding and immersion that are central to the DnD experience this is unacceptable.
Solution is to increase significantly the number of meaningful exchanges in a single combat so that (small) advantage that the PCs have can consistently come through. For example, player with 9:1 odds in any given throw has 97% chance of winning the best of 3 game contrary to 90 % chance of winning the single throw. Thus the rules can reduce the advantage the PCs have *in any round of combat* - making the game more interesting - while the increase in the number of rounds assures the low chance of actual defeat. This, however, can only be accomplished by fundamentally changing a nature of combat from its realistic "one hit wins" to a many round attrition battle best characterized by the DnD hit-point system. (This incidentally is also the reason why the low level play was always considered very deadly despite the fact that relative advantage of the PCs over their opponents was really as big if no bigger then at higher levels - the small HP pool simply did not prolong combat long enough to smooth out the statistics)
This is a reason why DnD never had and never can have realistic combat and why no game can simultaneously aspire to realistic combat and to persistent characters.
- On the similar note, DnD is not an attempt to recreate (in game form) the major tropes of fantasy/adventure literature.
While it is quite obviously inspired by heroic fantasy DnD is too closely specialized to be any sort of generic fantasy story telling system. Most of the fantasy literature (including ironically most of the DnD-branded novels) feature significantly less combat then an average DnD campaign. Part of the reason is that in a book combat needs to be kept close to its real life level of deadliness in order to maintain its narrative punch. More important reason is that tactical decisions of skirmish combat are much more interesting when experienced then when re-told. (Source of dreaded "let me tell you about my character" syndrome). Hence most of the fantasy classics rely heavily on the sort of actions (stealth/avoidance, wilderness travel, social conflict etc...) that are distinctly secondary in a DnD game, or at the very least mix them heavily with such combat as they depict.
If DnD were to become a game expression of classical fantasy narratives it would have to (as argued above) provide rules for all these classic fantasy tropes to the complexity that is on par with its combat rules. It does not and so we can safely conclude that re-creating classic fantasy is not DnD's primary goal.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, DnD is not strictly speaking a "Role Playing Game" in a sense of being particularly interested in players exploring the personalities of their characters.
This is a controversial statement because it is indisputable that DnD, with its immersive gameplay and first-person jargon allows players to role-play their characters. However, in edition after edition there was never a trace of mechanical, or even verbal encouragement for them to do so. Reason for this too is very simple - the role playing is a fairly introspective activity that will inevitably lead towards individualistic behavior. Entire genre (standalone LARP) is built around this feature of role playing and the fact that with very small initial setup the players can effectively entertain themselves through exploring the relationship of their character with those of others. While immensely entertaining for a night of LARPing everyone knows how this sort of individualism can ruin the DnD campaign. Not only is the cooperative skirmish campaign very difficult to pull off or even motivate for a group of 4-5 people with well developed personal motivations and agendas, but, more importantly, handling the multiple of well developed characters over a persistent campaign becomes practically impossible job for any but the most experienced DM.
In conclusion, makers of DnD, smartly, do not encourage role playing emphasizing instead the teamwork and tactics. DnD thus remains not a role-playing game but rather game during which you can role-play, provided that is not too disruptive to the game itself.
My conclusion from here is obvious. DnD 4 builds strongly on the very basis of the DnD franchise and represents significant improvement to what were always DnD fundamentals.
The base skirmish game is enhanced to be more dynamic and involving. Persistence of the game is re-confirmed through more meaningful level progression.
DM based play remains intact as does the immersive nature of the game. One can argue that the secondary rules that help immersion will get better then ever before (social conflicts etc) without becoming so complex as to rival the rules of the core game.
As for placing simulationist, narativist and role-playing demands on the game, as I said elsewhere, less you demand your stereo to toast your bread, the less frustrated with it you are liable to be.
