D&D 4E I'm really concerned about 4E

[rounser]

One would think world-building would be system-neutral.

There's a lot of the implied setting which impacts upon worldbuilding which will be unavailable at first, and then sort of retcon out of nowhere into settings, just like we're used to. e.g. new monsters, classes and races appearing spontaneously in worlds as the rules for them get introduced over the next few years.

Note how the published settings are getting retconned to the 4E ruleset now, and you'll see what I'm getting at.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

And if you believe that, I have a bridge in the Free City of Greyhawk to sell you.

It's a non-trivial project to convert from older editions to 3E. Stats are indeed the crux of it all. Old edition monster not out in 4E? Hmm, where's a viable substitute....oh, and four goblins were a challenge in 3E, but in 4E we'll need 12 etc. By the time you've done all that sort of stuff, you begin to ask yourself why you didn't just write something from scratch. You might re-use the maps and the plot, but all those monsters, traps, treasures and puzzles will probably need time consuming translations, or workarounds if there are no direct equivalents as some cases.

Worldbuilding, again, is not a rule-dependent process. End of story. I notice you have stopped talking about worldbuilding here, so I assume you've given up that line of argument.

As for adventures, we have been promised that the DM's job of building monsters, planning adventures, and other bookkeeping tasks will be made significantly easier. One of the examples of this we've already seen is that it will be possible to build new monsters essentially on the fly, using the monster creation rules. If it's anywhere near as easy as they say it is, I don't suppose it'll be too much of a problem to look at an existing monster and update it. Certainly we won't have to do all the work 3E requires with HD, skill points, feats, etc.

Take the Mad Slasher, a monster that appears in The Whispering Cairn. It is a quick monster with moderate HP, a moderately damaging attack, and an attack that lets it hit each adjacent opponent once. Its role is something like "ambusher," or whatever they're planning to call it in 4E. So, I look up the stats for a 2nd level ambusher, slap on the all-around attack power, and I'm done. Do I need three more of them for a balanced encounter? I cross off "1" and write in "4". Did it have a wand of CLW for treasure? I look up something equivalent in the DMG. Max five minutes work all around, if the previews are anywhere near accurate. While true conversion is unlikely to be easy, replacement of monsters, treasure, and other non-fluff elements with their 4E dopplegangers is probably going to be.

There are two reasons I buy prepackaged adventures. First, I don't want to have to spend a lot of time working up 3E statblocks. That will probably be, to a greater or lesser extent, remedied in 4E. Second, I don't have the time to write internally consistent plots, realistic NPCs, or plan dungeons. These things don't really have anything to do with the edition I'm using. I could run Age of Worms in FUDGE if I wanted to, with basically 15 minutes of prep per adventure. It would play a bit differently, but all the elements that make Age of Worms interesting would remain intact, and untouched.

 

[Vigilance]

But there are other "games within the game" of D&D...

...including worldbuilding (incredibly important to DMs I've discovered since many hang their egos on their homebrews or worship a published setting)

Anyone who is shocked that their world will experience some shockwaves must not have been Dming long. This will be Godwar IV for my Ariakus campaign setting.

...and adventures (very time consuming to create for 3E if you dot all the i's and cross the t's, so adventure paths are nice to have; will 4E improve on this?)

An initial paucity of resources in either of these departments is inevitable (e.g. it will take years for monsters, classes, region books and adventures to build up to a critical mass), so 3E will have the edge for at least several years in these departments.

Sure, but that was true of 2e, and 3e and even 3.5. DMs will have to scramble and adapt adventures, as well as write more of their own, for awhile. Again, most DMs have been through this before.

And for those who haven't, let me be the first to say "NEW MEAT! BLOOD IN THE WATER! HUAHHH!"

4E's novelty will make most overlook that, but nonetheless - it's a thought.

It is a thought, and indeed a concern.

That's why Wizards has economics majors looking at the numbers. I'm sure they have estimates of how many gamers they'll lose to grognardism, how many newbies they'll attract and have looked at what they were selling, and decided that this was the time.

I think a lot of folks are overreacting. Some because perhaps this is their first edition change. Some because the changes are *really* changes, and are being made to a game most folks are happy with.

This makes this edition change more analogous to 2e than 3e (in that most gamers were content with the previous rule set).

The difference is, this edition of the game seems to have that vision thing more than 2e did, which felt very watered down and "design by committee" to me.

In short, I think they're on the right track.

Like everyone else, pro and con, I'm waiting for May

Chuck

 

[rounser]

Worldbuilding, again, is not a rule-dependent process. End of story.

I have two words for you: Implied Setting. Argument refuted.

Take the Mad Slasher, a monster that appears in The Whispering Cairn. It is a quick monster with moderate HP, a moderately damaging attack, and an attack that lets it hit each adjacent opponent once. Its role is something like "ambusher," or whatever they're planning to call it in 4E. So, I look up the stats for a 2nd level ambusher, slap on the all-around attack power, and I'm done. Do I need three more of them for a balanced encounter? I cross off "1" and write in "4". Did it have a wand of CLW for treasure? I look up something equivalent in the DMG. Max five minutes work all around, if the previews are anywhere near accurate. While true conversion is unlikely to be easy, replacement of monsters, treasure, and other non-fluff elements with their 4E dopplegangers is probably going to be.

In theory, it's a doddle, but in reality there's problems like "monster doesn't exist in new edition" and "how many old goblins equal new goblins" and "old dungeon had 40 rooms, which will level 4E characters 4 levels, old characters just 1"....stuff like that which makes you able to retrieve maybe the maps and the plot, but otherwise might be in for some major surgery.

Now, about that bridge...normally it'd be asking just anyone off the street for at least 2000 gp, but for a man like you who clearly cannot be fooled, I think 200 will suffice?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

There's a lot of the implied setting which impacts upon worldbuilding which will be unavailable at first, and then sort of retcon out of nowhere into settings, just like we're used to. e.g. new monsters, classes and races appearing spontaneously in worlds as the rules for them get introduced over the next few years.

Note how the published settings are getting retconned to the 4E ruleset now, and you'll see what I'm getting at.

This looks mostly to do with two factors:

1. The magic system is changing
2. The planes are changing

The magic system changing needs an explanation. This happened in many campaigns, home and published, during the switch to 3E. I don't think that many people abandoned their homebrews because they had to do either a retcon or a world-changing event scenario...especially if homebrews are as important to their creators' egos as you suggested. It's a bit of a speed bump, but I don't see any problem with saying, "okay guys, we're changing to 4E. Let's start some new characters. Wizards cast spells like this now, clerics like this, and I don't plan to make a fuss about whether they used to cast spells differently. They still cast spells, and that's the important bit."

As for the planes, I think the reason for the change is to allow for planar adventures at lower levels. I proposed that the Feywild is for low-level planar adventures, the Shadowfell, for medium-level adventures, and the Astral Sea for high-level adventures. If we're going to use this mechanic in all the 4E settings--which is a design decision that could perhaps have gone the other way--they have to change the cosmology a bit. This is not so important for homebrews. If you want to use the Feywild, you can use it. If you prefer not to introduce it to your homebrew, don't. The implied cosmology need not be used. It is not a necessary change in the way that the new magic system is.

Personally, I plan to keep using Great Wheel cosmology, perhaps with the Feywild (read: Faerie) and Shadowfell (read: Land of the Dead) tacked on. I don't foresee any unsurmountable obstacles to my plan.

 

[rounser]

This looks mostly to do with two factors:

Monsters, classes, races don't matter in your worlds?

Planes and magic are a lot more neither here nor there for me compared to whether trolls exist over the next hill or not...maybe they don't until MM3 rocks around three years down the track. Would it matter to your setting if they weren't in MM1? (Hypothetical - odds are excellent that they will be, but it serves to illustrate my point.) But then, people are making such a big deal of the soap opera of the gods over in that FR thread that you'd think it was the most important part of the setting...and most people think that the setting is the most important part of the campaign, as opposed to my theory that in reality, "the adventure's the thing".

Anyway, I'm off to bed, will take this up later.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I have two words for you: Implied Setting. Argument refuted.

Discard the implied setting, much in the way that most homebrewers discarded the implied Greyhawk of 3rd edition. Problem solved. I don't know about you, but when I homebrew a campaign, I don't even open a book. It's completely irrelevant to the process.

In theory, it's a doddle, but in reality there's problems like "monster doesn't exist in new edition" and "how many old goblins equal new goblins" and "old dungeon had 40 rooms, which will level 4E characters 4 levels, old characters just 1"....stuff like that which makes you able to retrieve maybe the maps and the plot, but otherwise might be in for some major surgery.

I've already addressed "monster doesn't exist in new edition". Build it. How many goblins? Add up the XP and see. As for number of encounters, if you need more or fewer, just scrap some. The orcs in room 23 are now counted as part of the encounter in room 22, but they come in after the fighting begins. You probably don't even have to adjust the number of orcs.

Converting a module from 2E to 3E is such an onerous task that it simply wasn't worth the trouble. That's largely because of the 3E statblock. Remove that, and it boils down to making monster updates (or cribbing them from other people. See the Creature Collection on these boards), and fudging here and there for balance.

I anticipate that I will get little to no use out of my stacks of 3E hardcovers when playing 4E. I don't expect that my Dungeon magazines will be similarly cut off.

Now, about that bridge...normally it'd be asking just anyone off the street for at least 2000 gp, but for a man like you who clearly cannot be fooled, I think 200 will suffice?

You see a bridge there? Are you off your medication?

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

There's a lot of the implied setting which impacts upon worldbuilding which will be unavailable at first, and then sort of retcon out of nowhere into settings, just like we're used to. e.g. new monsters, classes and races appearing spontaneously in worlds as the rules for them get introduced over the next few years.

Note how the published settings are getting retconned to the 4E ruleset now, and you'll see what I'm getting at.

:\

You're used to, maybe. Retcons bigger than "now this monster/spell/item/organization that you haven't encountered before!" make me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Worldbuilding, again, is not a rule-dependent process. End of story.

I strongly disagree with this statement. The rules in many ways help define the setting - especially any systems of magic and other supernatural powers. They set down what is and what is not possible for the people in a world, and thus represent the "technology" of the setting in some way.

And technology has a huge impact on a world. Just compare Earth today with what it was like a thousand years ago - or even a hundred.

 

[hong]

See, DMs who like world-building are often indulging their gearhead gene. Where a player would treat the rules as Lego blocks to make a particular character build, a world-building DM treats the rules as Lego blocks to make a particular setting.