D&D 4E Is 4E the designers homebrew coming to my gaming table?

[Henry]

Let's be honest here.

Because all this stuff is imaginary (though the concepts they are derived from may not be) hasn't D&D always been an issue of folks playing in Gary Gygax's, Mike Mearls', Monte Cook's, etc. homebrew games?

This is the one thought that always pops up in my head when someone says, "AGH! The new edition is just so-and-so's house rules!" D&D's core conceits (Armor Class, hits/hit points, the effects of fireballs and other artillery spells, etc.) were almost all cribbed from previous miniatures games by Gygax and Arneson to make the hodge-podge of rules that became D&D in 1974 - most of the histories people have done (including their recollections) confirm it. They didn't have the goal of "designing the perfect game," they had the goal of designing a fun game that kept their interest to keep coming back playing. The First Age of RPG Gaming was the Age of Homebrew, no two ways about it. In my opinion, every edition since has been "homebrew," or had some homebrew elements, at least.

 

[Sundragon2012]

...snip... In my opinion, every edition since has been "homebrew," or had some homebrew elements, at least.

It certainly has been and this is why people's need for core/cannon affirmation of their pet concepts bugs the bejeebus out of me. When I see that, for example, Monte Cook is paid to create a book for WoTC fluff and all, he is of course accessing in his mind what HE would like to see in both mechanics and lore. Of course because he is a pro his mechanics are good (better than mine would likely be for certain) but his lore may be good or based on the reader's subjective opinion. However, does this mean that just because his writings become cannon that his ideas are better than another DM whose ideas don't get published by WoTC? I don't think so.

When one looks at Monte's Ptolus setting one is looking at his home campaign snazzied up for mass consumption. I loved the production values and likes some of the lore, but much of if it I found distinctly pedestrian and nothing at all noteworthy.

Looking at FR, one sees a setting that is the homebrew of Ed Greenwood and many other authors whose work becomes canon as they write novels and game materials to support the setting.

4e lore IS certainly going to smack of either the homebrews of the designers or the homebrew they wished they had the time to run if they weren't always so busy with WoTC projects. I would do the same thing. Its a dream job to actually have the opportunity to make your homebrew ideas into cannon.

EVERYONE READING THIS...please realize that no one else's lore is going to completely satisfy you. In order to be 100% satisfied you have to do the grunt work yourself and it will take plenty of work to get it right. Barring that use what others provide knowing that at the end of the day there is nothing better about what is in the bright shiney new book than what lies in your own imagination......unless it is.



Sundragon

 

[med stud]

I like the changes to the cosmology due to the fact that I never liked the Great Wheel, the Blood War or other parts of the old cosmology. But most of all I like the addition of tieflings and changelings (if they are added). In the old editions of D&D I think the races have stepped too much on each others' toes while the tiefling and changelings fill entire new niches in the game. The tiefling is also a common element in many fiction stories; half demon sorcerers, demons fathering children and it also gives a good angle to the question of inherent evil vs good actions. Tieflings can very easily be made into complex characters in a way that for example gnomes doesn't have the inherent possibility to be. Tieflings are also often estethically appealing for the kind of gamers that like darkness and horns and glowing eyes and stuff, and those gamers seem to be many.

I also think that the points of light- setting is far more fitting for a fantasy game than the renessance (wrong spelling I know) that older D&D editions had as assumption.

 

[Echohawk]

Now, they might eventually do a Manual of the Planes for 4E, sure.

"Might"?

I'm willing to bet good money that we get a 4E Manual of the Planes by 2010 .

 

[Cadfan]

I like the revisions.

The old standard D&D setting and standard D&D cosmology was a bunch of accumulated crap from like 30 years of poking and prodding but with very little pruning. At this point, the machete work was needed.

 

[WayneLigon]

My latest reservation is some of the fluff changes they are making

Fluff changes bother me not at all. I'm not married to the idea of trolls with carrot noses, dwarves as stoneworkers, tieflings, gnomes, the Great Wheel, the nature of Outsiders, or any of that. Fluff changes depending on whatever world I build, so it really doesn't matter much to me at all. If I were in charge of the 'story team' or whatever the 'Fluff Department' is called, the changes would be... well, they would be quite extensive and far-reaching.

 

[broghammerj]

This is the one thought that always pops up in my head when someone says, "AGH! The new edition is just so-and-so's house rules!" D&D's core conceits (Armor Class, hits/hit points, the effects of fireballs and other artillery spells, etc.) were almost all cribbed from previous miniatures games by Gygax and Arneson to make the hodge-podge of rules that became D&D in 1974 - most of the histories people have done (including their recollections) confirm it. They didn't have the goal of "designing the perfect game," they had the goal of designing a fun game that kept their interest to keep coming back playing. The First Age of RPG Gaming was the Age of Homebrew, no two ways about it. In my opinion, every edition since has been "homebrew," or had some homebrew elements, at least.

I'll give you that mechanics changes may be someone's house rules....arguably they should be a lot of peoples house rules because we as players detect a problem and change it. The idea that we are playing in Gygax's homebrew is true, but he INVENTED the game.

At some point the old editions become canon and provide us with a universal concept of what is DND. Those concepts can evolve if written into story etc. Want to change the Great Wheel, then write a cataclysmic event that changes the make up of the planes. Don't simply handwave all the old versions away because you don't like how they work.

Not to tread lightly on the forum rules or involve too much religion but the concept would be similar to telling the modern day of story of Catholics, Episcopalians, etc without ever referring to the New Testament.

I am not against change per say. What I am against is destroying or discarding 3 editions of DND history. Remember they keep refering to evolution so write the fluff so it gets from point A to point B

 

[broghammerj]

The more of these Design & Development articles I read, the more it seems clear to me that, whatever other purpose this new fluff serves, it also creates a new batch of D&D IP.

I hadn't thought about this but you may be on to something.

 

[RFisher]

Is 4E the designers homebrew coming to my gaming table?

I hope so.

That's were it all starts. Game designers are merely homebrewers who dedicated enough time to it to get paid for it. Most of us just aren't willing to take the pay cut.

In my experience, where things go wrong is when the designers try to please others instead of just publishing their homebrew. Witness the least liked parts of 1e, which are the same parts EGG included at the insistence of others.

Give us the best you have, don't bother trying to please others, do waste time playtesting/proofing & providing "behind the curtain" design notes, & we'll adapt it to our preferences ourselves.

 

[Scribble]

I can't wait until May when the new books come out. The mechanics of 4E will hopefully fix many of the problems associated with 3.5 without generating too many new problems.

My latest reservation is some of the fluff changes they are making:

Elemental planes more hospitable, demons/devil changes, eladrin/teiflings in the core, silly named magic traditions, points of light campaign model, cosmology/great wheel changes, etc.

I imagined the core books providing a game mechanic and fixing problems with how 3.5 played. What I didn't bargain for was a rewrite of some pretty defined themes within DnD. I wonder if this is a bit of the designers homebrew (or office brew if you will) sneaking into 4E

I don't feel that these were broken issues and that the DnD community was clamoring for them to be fixed.

Most importantly, I think the designers should be focusing their attention on rules and soldifying a core gaming mechanic. These fluffy things can be added in later supplements if need be. This seems a bit problematic especially since some of the fixes for 3.5 they have promised appear to be in the works rather than actually resolved (ie multiclassing, gish characters, rapid NPC generation).

Just wondering what others think (beside Treebore and Celebrim whose opinions seem thematically similar to my own) Just kidding guys....feel free to chime in

I think what the designers are trying to do, is solidify the changes. It's not a rules thing, but more of a psychological mental thing. If they come out with a new way of doing alignment, then they want to support that new alignment method. They want EVERYTHING in D&D to now reflect that change to the core.

If they kept the GW as it was, then the new alignment changes and changes to how Demons and Devils act would be like the balding guy that tries to do the comb over... The underlying old system is still there, which makes the new one just seem weird.

So really, they're not wasting any time changing "fluff." They're supporting the changes they made to the crunch.

If that makes any sense...