I can't read 4e books like I could 3e books. You?

[WayneLigon]

I've always thought every edition was grossly overwritten, including this one. By Gosh, it can't be that hard to get everything down to about the size of a single Basic book.

 

[Logan_Bonner]

But then, I never, ever read a gaming book cover to cover, page by page. It's always a very eclectic "jump around, reading the parts I am interested in the most" and "Use as a reference tool".

Right, this was the intent. Making the rules easy to reference was the goal, and breaking things out so that information was easy to find later on. While having something be a fun read on its own is great, it's more important, I think, that the gaming books facilitate playing the game, and other concerns are secondary. No story is going to be as fun as the one you tell at the table through the events of your game.

I consider the format of the 4E books to be more similar to reading on the internet than reading a novel. You hop around from place to place, grabbing the important bits of info you need, looking for the text that really jumps out as important because its formatted that way. The style of writing acknowledges that this is a game, not a novel, and the mechanics and story are segregated to an extent.

I think Rechan's right about Manual of the Planes, though. It's got some a little more balance between mechanics and story. We've also added some flavorful sidebars to the ________ Power books, so I think they'll make better reads than the PH does. (Keep in mind that that was a later addition to the early ones, so it's not until later books of that series that you'll really see what I'm talking about.) I really like the sidebar approach, because it gives you a nugget of fun, flavorful text, but doesn't deluge you with a ton of information about a subject that really only warrants a few paragraphs. Hope everybody else likes it, too!

 

[howandwhy99]

I agree with WotC Logan here. RPG books are better off as tools, reference manuals you use to construct what you need to run your game. The popularity of books that read like novels throughout the 90s only created and perpetuated a slew of gamers who read, but did not play RPGs. 4th Edition's PHB and MM are obviously layed out to be used during play not read for the readers benefit like the 4E DMG - more of an advice GUIDE than a reference HANDBOOK. Just my .02 cents.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Right, this was the intent. Making the rules easy to reference was the goal, and breaking things out so that information was easy to find later on. While having something be a fun read on its own is great, it's more important, I think, that the gaming books facilitate playing the game, and other concerns are secondary. No story is going to be as fun as the one you tell at the table through the events of your game.
...
I consider the format of the 4E books to be more similar to reading on the internet than reading a novel. You hop around from place to place, grabbing the important bits of info you need, looking for the text that really jumps out as important because its formatted that way. The style of writing acknowledges that this is a game, not a novel, and the mechanics and story are segregated to an extent.

Of course, printed books can't be the internet. They can be dictionaries or encyclopedias, but dictionary.com and wikipedia will trump it more often than not. No printed d20 SRD could have the immense utility of d20srd.org, no matter how hard it tried, no matter how encyclopedic it was.

4e isn't really even close to a dictionary or an encyclopedia as a reference document. Well, that's not entirely true, the MM is pretty close. But when I see a condition mentioned in an ability and then have to hop around between that ability and some random page in the combat chapter to figure out exactly what that means...issues like this are solved easily on The Internet (ah, the beauty of a hyperlink!), but they're more difficult for a printed book to wrestle with (at least without a humongous index or an exhaustive table of contents). This is solved by the draconian organizational rules of a dictionary or an encyclopedia, but (aside from the MM), this isn't a format that any of the 4e books take.

Not that the 4e book aren't a step up from most 3e books in being reference material. They absolutely are, in many ways. It's just that, if they're trying to be reference documents, they're missing a lot of things that are great for referencing. An appendix list of powers by level and class and type, or a simple list of conditions or magic items by level, would go a LONG way toward making something like the PH a better reference document.

Now, I do consider 4e a better reference document than 3e was, even if it's not to the level that makes it an ideal utility, so there is something to be said for progress. However, I share sympathies with the OP with regards to the simple gut appeal of a less clinical tone and a flow of reading that progresses naturally. No encyclopedia or dictionary is going to provide this, and it's hardly a generally good idea to mix in rules in obscure places that take a lot of effort to find, but that doesn't mean some appeal isn't lost when becoming more "formalized." But, on the other hand, since 4e has a way to go before it becomes a reference document like that, I'm not entirely confident that much was gained from adopting a more staid style.

Still, that's a personal quibble. If the goal is to make 4e a better reference document for D&D, I can see the value in that goal, and would support it, but it does mean that the rulebooks as-is don't quite achieve this goal (even if they come closer than previous editions).

Oh, and PS:

The style of writing acknowledges that this is a game, not a novel, and the mechanics and story are segregated to an extent.

I prefer it immensely when the mechanics and the story work together to create a harmonious whole rather than when they are on either side of a wrought iron fence made of tigers.

Yin and yang, gaia and uranos, male and female, these things go best together, not separate. It is possible to have your cake and eat it, too, and I'd be eager to see what happens when you rip down that wall (or even when you just make little passages through it), because that is the ideal gaming experience that I continually seek and get an immense rush off of.

But mostly that is my catchprhase this month, so I need to repeat it every chance I get.

 

[Serendipity]

I dunno - if the statement had been "I can't read 4e books like I could 1e books" then I'd agree with you. (I loves me some Gygaxian longwindedness!) Some of the 3e books were far better at being readable and inspiring ideas than others (Lords of Madness for example, though of course YMMV). When I need to leaf through rules for ideamining, the old Gygax era 1e AD&D books, and the boxed set OD&D books (ideally Mentzer) still work. (Not so much the 2e stuff for me, but then I'm not referring to setting material here.)
But the 4e books are dry to the point of textbook in places, which is fine but that doesn't assist the absorbsion of information anymore than it does in a textbook. At least not for me.

 

[darjr]

eh...

Just my two cents. I don't have any real problem with either set of books.

I actually like reading them.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I'm in the same boat. I can't read the 4e books like I read the 3e books.

Logan, I would argue that inspiring a reader facilitates gameplay just as much as "making the rules easy to reference" does. After all, if no one is inspired, there won't be any gameplay.

I would also argue that the two goals - let's call them form (beautiful, fun to read prose) and function (clarity, easy rules references) - are not as divergent as WOTC seems to think. I agree with your prioritizing of the two goals; let's call that form follows function. Good principle. But that doesn't mean that the form can't be beautiful. Frank Loyd Wright did it. The "form follows function" principle only points to what type of beauty the form should have.

On the vocabulary and the "Are the 4e books written at a 5th-grade reading level?" topic, my observation is that both WOTC and Paizo have edited words including virgate, ligneous, and immanent (not imminent) out of pieces that I have written for them. The exception is Chris Youngs, the once-and-current Dungeon and Dragon editor, who back when Dungeon was in print, printed a couple adventures that used words like damozel and infanta, both of which I suspect other D&D editors would have nixed.

 

[Wormwood]

I daresay you won't find a bigger 4e fanboy than yours truly.

But I readily admit to whiling away countless hours curled up with the 1e DMG and my old 2e Forgotten Realms sourcebooks.

Pity they weren't actually as fun to play as they were to read. Perhaps all I needed was a solid set of instructions all along.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Have to say this was one of the biggest turn off to 4e. The book was boring and to much like a video game manual. I read over almost every game book I have and the 4e books[I don't own them} were cold and just boring .

 

[Filcher]

1e, I would venture to suggest quite strongly, possessed the highest number on the "readability" chart. Gygaxian English was just awesome to digest. It taught hordes of us a new vocabulary, sparked interest in history and literature, etc. Gary could take three pages to explain one topic and only have 4-5 lines that actual mattered insofar as game mechanics were concerned.

Agreed.

4E is a *far* better rule book (gems and their esoteric uses, anyone?), but terrible reading. All in all, I miss the old style, but when I actually need to use a rule book I appreciate 4E and its clean design.