I actually want a 4th edition! [semi-rant]

[molonel]

It's not blasphemy to say you're tired of the rules glut. I love 3rd Edition. It brought me back to the game. But part of what killed the game during 2nd Edition for me was the rules bloat, and they are reaching that stage now. I think they are also hardening their market against 4th Edition's release, whenever that is.

3.5 was both too much and too little. I am really getting tired of the "dot whatever" in every aspect of entertainment. Seasonal shows are now giving us "Season 2.5" and it blows.

At this point, I have two shelves of books for 3rd Edition. Most of them, I use only occasionally. Most of my money is going into miniatures and terrains, and things that will last no matter what edition of the game I'm playing.

If WotC thinks I'm going to buy ANOTHER two shelves of the same books over the next several years, they've got another thing coming. I find myself more attracted to campaign settings and d20 rules sets that don't reboot every three or four years, like Iron Heroes and Conan d20, and Midnight. Less books, more flavor.

And God, yes. I'm so tired of prestige classes (nearing 1,000 in WotC's published materials), and feats.

 

[Glyfair]

And did they acutally said, there will be no D&D 4e? I have read Abyssal Maw's thread, but didn't find anything like that...

They said, in fact, that there will be a 4th edition. However, it will be a "long time." To me, 4E being next year isn't a "long time."

To me, the fact that your group can ignore the new rules and options keeps rules bloat in check. Now if products started being released that started assuming you had access to and used the new rules there would be issues. Unfortunately, they are heading that direction (how much of Complete Mage requires Complete Arcane?)

 

[delericho]

While I wasn't actively hoping for an announcement, I am in the position where I am ready for a 4e t be produced... if done right. There are a number of areas in the current ruleset that could do with heavy revision, revision that is not appropriate to do without a new edition, IMO.

As for the 'rules glut' argument... I don't buy it. But then, I've never had a problem saying to players "Core Rules Only", or "you can use this and this, but not that", or whatever.

The other issue I have with the current game is that the whole thing has become a bit same-y, where we now see the same characters and tropes over and over again, with surprisingly little variation given the extent of the supplementary rules. But that's absolutely not something that will be fixed with a new edition, since that will inevitably take us back to the core. I'm not sure if it can be fixed by anything other than a determined effort on the part of a gaming group to break the mould.

(for starters, throw out the over-dependance on miniatures that 3.5 introduced).

Never gonna happen. Minis make too much money. I fully expect 4e to rely more on minis, not less so.

 

[Abstraction]

What over-dependance on miniatures?! The game does rely on map-based combat, but nobody is EVER required to buy anything for it. For cripes sake, they even give you a combat grid for free!

 

[EyeontheMountain]

What over-dependance on miniatures?! The game does rely on map-based combat, but nobody is EVER required to buy anything for it. For cripes sake, they even give you a combat grid for free!

I agree. Minis area nice addition, but hardly required for tactical combat. Pennies, dice, and colored glass beads all make excellent 'miniatures'.

 

[Hussar]

Or, if you're like me, a 45x45 pixel gif pick with a border makes for an excellent mini. I loves me the DDM site. Makes making minis SOOOO easy.

But, even before I played online, we just used counters - poker chips with printouts on top - for minis.

 

[Droogie]

I can understand complaints of rules bloat concerning the core rules. Plenty of people really just hate Attacks of Opportunity. Grapple should not be as complicated as it is (long sequence of rolls to determine success). Over reliance on bonuses are also a problem, when it gets to a point that the bonuses to damage are 2 or 3 times the range of the base die (consider a Longsword, at 1d8. Now consider a longsword +3 used by a Barbarian with 20 Str who is raging while under the influence of Prayer, Bulls Strength, and has a further +3 bonus from a Bard).

That was my issue. I was hoping a new edition what refine things a little, maybe consolidate skills and whatnot. I've recently become sick of 3-hour combat sessions. I can forbid certain books and rules at my table, and I do with little fuss. I'm just starting to get weary of the core rules. Ah, well. Guess I'll just suck it up for a couple more years.

Or, if you're like me, a 45x45 pixel gif pick with a border makes for an excellent mini. I loves me the DDM site. Makes making minis SOOOO easy.

Indeed. We did similar stuff before my group and I succumbed to plastic crack. In the age of Photoshop and even Campaign Cartographer, there really is no need to go without some sort of graphical representation of the battlefield if you really want one.

 

[ruleslawyer]

What over-dependance on miniatures?! The game does rely on map-based combat, but nobody is EVER required to buy anything for it. For cripes sake, they even give you a combat grid for free!

Agreed. I actually *can't* use minis in my home game, since a) table space doesn't permit and b) we use a projection on the wall as our map.

 

[JustKim]

Or, if you're like me, a 45x45 pixel gif pick with a border makes for an excellent mini. I loves me the DDM site. Makes making minis SOOOO easy.

I understand the idea, but.. why do you use pictures of the miniatures for your counters? I mean, if you're going to represent with a cropped picture, WotC's art galleries have pictures of every creature from every book, and they tend to look a lot better.

 

[Hussar]

I understand the idea, but.. why do you use pictures of the miniatures for your counters? I mean, if you're going to represent with a cropped picture, WotC's art galleries have pictures of every creature from every book, and they tend to look a lot better.

When you are working from such limited size, using pretty pictures doesn't really work for more than head shots. Trying to fit in a 600x400 pixel image into a 30x30 mini just results in a blob. The DDM pics are usually around 100 pixels and, if you whack off the base and crop the white space, you wind up with a very quick and easy mini.

Now, because I use a 30 pixel=5 feet scale, medium sized minis are pretty puny. If I started using larger scales, I could use prettier pictures. Just a limitation of using such a huge map as the World's Largest Dungeon.