Jack7
First Post
Will 4th Edition lead to a more Realistic and Useful Game?
When I was a kid I played the original D&D game, including the precursors, and then later the First Edition of the game (AD&D - I still have my original copies of the 1st Edition books). As a matter of fact I introduced the game to most of my friends, being one of the first in my area to play.
Later when the Second Edition was published I skipped it, being almost wholly unimpressed by the modest changes.
Years and years later I got most of the Third Edition books, even though I had serious reservations about the products and the manner and direction in which the game seemed to be evolving. Although able to adapt some of the elements of the Third Edition into my campaign(s) (my friends and I played a single campaign for about ten years, and I was mostly Dungeon Master and game/scenario/milieu/module creator during that time, then I did not play for almost fifteen years, and then I developed a second world, based upon our real world set within the Byzantine Empire, which we have played ever since then) but all in all the Third Edition was not very useful to us.
I found such gaming concepts and mechanics (in the 3rd E) as the ever gathering momentum towards a more and more fantasy oriented game (by that I mean rather vapid modern fantasy writing) to be totally useless, both as a motivation for gaming, and as a useful exercise in gaming achievement. We found ideas such as War Forged Dwarves and Shadowdancers to be ridiculous and silly and counter-productive to gaming with any real intention other than momentary distraction and a sort of juvenile pass-time. In short gaming became more and more like a bad video game or a B-Grade fantasy movie on the Sci-Fi channel than an exercise in myth, religion, tactics, history, literature, strategy, skill, adventure, or even entertainment and enjoyment. At least if pursued along 3rd Edition gaming parameters. In addition the game became so plodding, cumbersome, artificial, mechanical, and lacking in any real corrpeosndence to the real world that we all avoided adapting 3rd Edition concepts to anything but the most mechanical operations of the game. Otherwise we used the basic 1st Edition rules, constantly refining and evolving those rules as time progressed, occasionally adapting and adopting 3rd Edition concepts within the periphery of our campaigns and games as warranted.
But in general we simply found the new direction in which the game seemed to be proceeding to be what we called "Gaming Pornography." That is the game system, and the supporting products produced, seemed to exist for no other reason than self-gratification and self-absorption in the game itself, a game so totally divorced from reality and the experience of the real world that it became ever more cartoonish and escapist, rather than instructional and inspirational.
Be that all as it may, having now recently discovered that the game is to be transformed yet again by a new Edition I cannot help but wonder if this revised system will lead to a more useful and realistic game, or will it simply lead to a new orgy of purple and green skinned races of silly flame throwing super assassins with no connection to the real world? With none of the historical, mythological, religious, cultural, literary, poetical, etc. connection to the past of the real world which made the original game so fascinating, realistic (given the necessarily accepted semi-fictional parameters of a fantasy based role-playing game), useful, and enjoyable?
If this new Edition is simply a re-vision of yet another, albeit more muted or simplified, foray into the absurdly useless "fantasy-view" that Role Playing must lead as far away from the real world as possible and become in itself a sort of imaginary and yet useless surrogate/vicarious world which bears as little resemblance to the world of the player as it would necessarily be chaotic and senseless to the character himself, then I have no interest in such an edition, or such products.
But if the game begins to revolve back into the roots from which it sprang, if it breeds more mythology than meaninglessness, more edification than mere escapism, then I will view this new development with real interest.
We'll see I guess and I'm sure that those of you who keep up with the game for the sake of gaming are far more aware of the direction and thrust of these developments than I.
But if you have an opinion on where you think all of this will lead, and why, or how, then please feel free to let me know your opinion on how the new Edition will evolve, and in what direction it might guide the game itself.
Will the 4th Edition lead to a more realistic and useful game, or will it proceed towards an altogether other end?
When I was a kid I played the original D&D game, including the precursors, and then later the First Edition of the game (AD&D - I still have my original copies of the 1st Edition books). As a matter of fact I introduced the game to most of my friends, being one of the first in my area to play.
Later when the Second Edition was published I skipped it, being almost wholly unimpressed by the modest changes.
Years and years later I got most of the Third Edition books, even though I had serious reservations about the products and the manner and direction in which the game seemed to be evolving. Although able to adapt some of the elements of the Third Edition into my campaign(s) (my friends and I played a single campaign for about ten years, and I was mostly Dungeon Master and game/scenario/milieu/module creator during that time, then I did not play for almost fifteen years, and then I developed a second world, based upon our real world set within the Byzantine Empire, which we have played ever since then) but all in all the Third Edition was not very useful to us.
I found such gaming concepts and mechanics (in the 3rd E) as the ever gathering momentum towards a more and more fantasy oriented game (by that I mean rather vapid modern fantasy writing) to be totally useless, both as a motivation for gaming, and as a useful exercise in gaming achievement. We found ideas such as War Forged Dwarves and Shadowdancers to be ridiculous and silly and counter-productive to gaming with any real intention other than momentary distraction and a sort of juvenile pass-time. In short gaming became more and more like a bad video game or a B-Grade fantasy movie on the Sci-Fi channel than an exercise in myth, religion, tactics, history, literature, strategy, skill, adventure, or even entertainment and enjoyment. At least if pursued along 3rd Edition gaming parameters. In addition the game became so plodding, cumbersome, artificial, mechanical, and lacking in any real corrpeosndence to the real world that we all avoided adapting 3rd Edition concepts to anything but the most mechanical operations of the game. Otherwise we used the basic 1st Edition rules, constantly refining and evolving those rules as time progressed, occasionally adapting and adopting 3rd Edition concepts within the periphery of our campaigns and games as warranted.
But in general we simply found the new direction in which the game seemed to be proceeding to be what we called "Gaming Pornography." That is the game system, and the supporting products produced, seemed to exist for no other reason than self-gratification and self-absorption in the game itself, a game so totally divorced from reality and the experience of the real world that it became ever more cartoonish and escapist, rather than instructional and inspirational.
Be that all as it may, having now recently discovered that the game is to be transformed yet again by a new Edition I cannot help but wonder if this revised system will lead to a more useful and realistic game, or will it simply lead to a new orgy of purple and green skinned races of silly flame throwing super assassins with no connection to the real world? With none of the historical, mythological, religious, cultural, literary, poetical, etc. connection to the past of the real world which made the original game so fascinating, realistic (given the necessarily accepted semi-fictional parameters of a fantasy based role-playing game), useful, and enjoyable?
If this new Edition is simply a re-vision of yet another, albeit more muted or simplified, foray into the absurdly useless "fantasy-view" that Role Playing must lead as far away from the real world as possible and become in itself a sort of imaginary and yet useless surrogate/vicarious world which bears as little resemblance to the world of the player as it would necessarily be chaotic and senseless to the character himself, then I have no interest in such an edition, or such products.
But if the game begins to revolve back into the roots from which it sprang, if it breeds more mythology than meaninglessness, more edification than mere escapism, then I will view this new development with real interest.
We'll see I guess and I'm sure that those of you who keep up with the game for the sake of gaming are far more aware of the direction and thrust of these developments than I.
But if you have an opinion on where you think all of this will lead, and why, or how, then please feel free to let me know your opinion on how the new Edition will evolve, and in what direction it might guide the game itself.
Will the 4th Edition lead to a more realistic and useful game, or will it proceed towards an altogether other end?
