Raven Crowking said:
OK, then.
There are several avenues where I have problems with the 4e releases thus far, but only two are relevant here. I will describe them under the headers "Basic Experience" and "Diversity of Experience". Although they are linked, I feel that doing so will make my position clearer. Please note also that this is a first real attempt to do this, so there will be a lot of rough edges.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to write such an extensive answer! Reading it through, I agree with you on many points.
If you don't mind, I'll respond, below, only to those parts where I disagree with you.
Here's an easy example: Alignment. One of the primary tenets of fantasy, going back before the term "fantasy" was used, is that moral choices have consequence in the real world. This is as true for The Golden Compass as it is for The Lord of the Rings as it is for King Arthur, as it is for Beowulf, as it is for Gilgamesh. Alignment in D&D has always been used as a tool to bring this into the game.
There has also been a nice side benefit to this method of growing the core identity: As players/DMs read more, they encountered echoes of the game they were playing. One could pick up almost any fantasy novel (and still can to this day, including modern fantasy) and discover things that D&D reflects, or that reflect D&D. In this way, the simple act of reading or seeing a movie recharges creative batteries and increases both the range and the depth of what might occur in the game.
This is not just a "good" basis for the game, it is a bloody brilliant one, and one whose like has never been matched.
I do like alignment, for the most part, but I must point out that it is one of the most contentious, disliked and frequently excised or house-ruled parts of (A)D&D. Much of that dislike probably dates from the earlier editions, where alignment sometimes was used as the straitjacket its opponents claim it is. (IIRC, 2e had the character stop gaining experience or even losing it if they changed their alignment!)
That said, I think, based on the designer comments, that 4e will still have alignment, but not all creatures will be aligned. It seems to me that they're reserving aligned status to beings who, under the current 3.5 rules would have auras stronger than
faint: undead, fiends, celestials, clerics, and high-level characters who've taken an active role in the world, either for good or evil.
If this turns out to be the way they handle alignment in 4e, I'll be satisfied.
If, on the other hand, "an assemblage of characters go to mysterious places, encounter mysterious creatures, and seek treasure", is all there is to D&D's core identity, then "an assemblage of scarab beetles go to mysterious dungheaps, encounter mysterious bugs, and seek dung" would be as appealing as any other set-up.
That sounds like it would be appealing to dung beetles.
Anyway, I think I think you're exaggerating a bit here. I think that character classes, levels, abstracted HP, six ability scores and such are more important parts of D&D's core identity than alignment, and WotC is retaining all those concepts.
However, I don't think that a DM should have to write that much simply to create diversity from the core. Which means that the names, concepts, and fluff text in the core should be as generic as possible, with expansions that broaden the horizon as much as possible. This is the 2e, and later the 3e, model.
And it is a good model.
It allows for an immersion in that brilliant core experience of the game without modification, and equally allows for modification to take the game away from that core experience into newer, less charted (or even uncharted) territories.
I agree with you. The thing is, I don't think the implied setting we're seen is going to cause any problems. The information about races sounds very similar to what we've seen in earlier editions; tieflings and dragonborn are new to PHB, but IMO they broaden the possibilities for campaigns with tone differing from Tolkien, medieval romances etc.
Now, this was all ultra-light-touch branding, but it was much more pervasive than one might think at first brush. Where 1e had said, "here's a griffon," 2e said "here's a griffon, and here's what it eats, and here's how it acts." Similarly, 2e was not concerned with merely giving you elves, it was concerned with the particulars of elven society in a way that, in the end, made D&D less diverse the more materials you used.
More materials = more diversity is good.
More materials = less diversity is bad.
I can see your point about the implied setting becoming more extensive and pervasive, but I have to disagree about it limiting your options or reducing diversity. In my gaming experience, what the Monstrous Manual or the PHB said about elven culture, or the feeding and care of griffons, never came in the way of either the players or the DM. When problems arose, they were because the DM and the players had differing ideas about elves or whatnot, but not because one or another of them diverged from the books.
I've run Keep on the Borderlands using BD&D, 1e, 2e, and 3e. Doing so, in each case, required only minimal modification. I suspect that I will not be able to run Keep on the Borderlands without heavy modification in 4e. In fact, I suspect that Keep on the Shadowfell is supposed to be 4e's Keep on the Borderlands. I begin to suspect that the delay in getting an SRD to third-party developers is to ensure that KotS becomes a shared experience. After all, you'll have nothing else to try.
I don't see anything bad about there being a 4e shared experience, or that it is not the same shared experience as in the earlier editions. As for being able (or not) to run KotB in 4e, I think we do not have enough information about the new rules to come to definite conclusions yet.
Now, I've never played KotB (not a part of my shared experiences, unlike, say,
The Isle of Dread), but from what I've seen online, it is a fairly basic adventure scenario with the keep, and nearby caves, with some monsters in them, and the "meat" of the thing comes from the DM building upon this basic structure as the PCs explore the place. For low-level 4e characters, what sort of extensive modification do you think would be necessary?
I once participated in a thread about the rust monster, and the Mearls redesign of the same. In my view, coming from earlier versions of the game, the rust monster is a wonderfully adaptable creature that can be used in the game in several ways: used to detect seams of metal by the miner's guild, used to indicate old dwarf works (where it still seeks out mined and unmined ore), and explanation for why dwarfholds use stone doors with recessed hinges, even an intelligent genius of its kind that can be bargained with. Contrasting to this was the view that the rust monster could only be used as a "gotcha" monster that should really be statted as a hazard.
To be honest, rust monster seems to be designed as a "gotcha" monster, much like the gelatinous cube. The adaptability and multiple uses you indicate are not something inherent in the critter itself.
"Branding" is all about restricting options to a common denominator. As I said earlier, this is generally a bad thing for D&D. Fluff names like "Golden Wyvern Style" require more work to remove from the game than it seems on the surface, as Dr. Awkward pointed out so well. Indeed, it might be easier to stat up gnome PCs for yourself than to extract the common denominator fluff being built into the game's terminology.
Again, in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, we've changed the fluff - names and implied setting connections - of prestige classes, spells and magic items without much difficulty. I don't think it is going to be as big an issue as you believe.
Say what you like, but the concept of "lizard guys" as a protagonist species is far, far less common as elves or dwarves in the same role. Offspring of devils/demons? Sure, that's fairly common (Merlin was one, according to some sources), but that could have been covered by a feat or a background "racial talent tree" available to any race. And "tiefling" is a (IMHO) stupid name that doesn't have the same instinctive meaning as even "tainted" would have (i.e., Merlin, tainted human wizard 16).
Well, by now the name "tiefling" has been around for thirteen years (
Planescape was released in 1994); I'd think it has become very much a part of the D&D shared experience.
As for the rarity of lizard people as protagonists, you have a point. But then again, in the sword & sorcery fiction where the reptilian peoples are fairly common, wizards are rarely the protagonists, either. (Besides of which, there is something very appealing with lizardfolk; a lot of people have mentioned having a soft spot for them.)
Ditching the Great Wheel? Meh. The Great Wheel only existed as an example of how to create your own cosmology, anyway. Trying to force your cosmology down my throat by tying the "new core" PC races into it? No bloody thank you.
I don't quite see how the presence of tieflings forces the new example cosmology down your throat. As you said, humans with demonic or devilish taint are a common theme in both myth and in fiction!
So to answer your question, the thing that is being removed by 4e that was supported by all the other editions, to varying degrees, and with varying degrees of emphasis, is the core identity of D&D itself: the trappings of the world, society, races, magic, gods and monsters shameless ripped off from other fantasy sources and filtered through the Gygaxian lens.
Add to it by all means. Take it away, though, and you deliver a weak sauce indeed. (Thanks, KM, for that phrase.)
Again, I agree. But I don't see them taking away all that much. Gnomes and (I believe) half-orcs will get treatment in the MM, but neither of them were very popular (vocal gnome fans on these boards notwithstanding
) races, I think. (Half-orcs were missing entirely from the 2e, and neither existed in the D&D boxed sets as PC races.)
With classes, you have a better point, since apparently monk, bard and druid will appear in later books. However, monks and bards are probably the two least used and most disliked classes in the PHB.
Druids are much more popular, and I understand people wishing to see them in the first book. However, classically druids have been basically a cleric variant, and as such it makes IMO sense for WotC to put, say, warlords in their place in the PHB.
In the end, I think we agree in many ways about what D&D is, and should be, but disagree in how much and in which ways WotC's stated design changes will affect this. This is, for the most part, obviously up to personal preference, and neither of us can be said to be "right" or "wrong" about these issues.
Again, thanks for taking the time to make your case! Now, we'll have to wait for the 4e (or at least more preview stuff) to see what the final game will look like, and how it will feel; who knows, maybe you'll end up loving 4e, while I will drop it!
