D&D 4E Is 4E winning you or losing you?

[Maggan]

I'll get 4e, and I think the changes will be fun to check out, and then I'll try the game and see if it's good for me.

I will probably avoid the discussions about 4e like the plague from now and until early spring. Too much noise about miniscule hints about proposed changes are eating away too much of my time and my enthusiasm for gaming.

So I'll mostly hang out on the General board instead.

/M

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I began very optimistic and excited, mostly off of SWSE and d20 Modern that introduced excellent mechanical solutions for the problems of 3.X.

However, two things have knocked me back so far. First, that playtesters have been selected at random from DDI members, which leaves me disappointed. Second, the prevalence of 'fluff' potentially becoming an integral part of class descriptions etc.

I want the game to be a mechanical tool that allows me to create my own fluff. I don't mind things like 'Wizards learn their magic in university, from books', but then throwing in the name of some universities and tying mechanics to each, that leaves me cold. I really think that the PHB should be generic in flavour, with the DMG absorbing the suggested fluff. When settings books come out - it's just going to be damned confusing if there's too much inherent story in the D&D mechanics.

 

[Arthnek]

The major interest to me in 4e is the roll out of the virtual gaming table.

Beyond the virtual table I have little real interest or enthusiasm for 4th edition. If it is not impossible I will probably be running good old AD&D using the virtual table for my friends. I have two entire book cases full of D&D books and a massive homebrew campaign. I don't really feel the need to run out and buy more rule books.

I am more interested in dungeons and setting materials I can transplant in my existing campaign.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Mostly, it's losing me in context of being the "next D&D incarnation"...because as far as I'm concerned, it won't be.

As for trying to be the "next World's Most Popular Fantasy RPG"...I wish them all the luck and success they most likely will have with it. I might take a peek into the books if I can get my hands on them, to see if anything can be cribbed for my games, but that's about the gist of it at the moment.

And basically, they lost me with the changes to the magic system.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't like killing sacred cows, so for this reason I am not afraid to say that yes, for me 4e is not like D&D has always been in many ways, and I don't care how many disagrees, it's just my own gut feeling.

That said, it sounds like 4e is going to be a perfectly viable RPG ruleset, therefore I am certainly interested to try it out (probably a few months after it goes out, hoping to possibly avoid the typical error-rich first print), in the same way I would be interested to try other systems if they seem good.

Note that I don't like killing even the sacred cows I personally dislike: I'd like them all to stay, but to have easy options to replace them IMC, without forcing everybody else to my own preferences.

The feeling I'm getting when discussing about it, is that every gamer has had at least a couple of things they always hated about D&D, and they would like the rest of the world to conform with them. Hence you get all these "kill the sacred cows" gospel chants But at the same time, everyone undoubtedly also have always had things they always loved about D&D, which are sacred cows as well, but obviously they'd want those others to stay...

That is basically the reason why so many rollercoaster feelings: excited/aroused by new changes, "kill them all"... until oops they've killed my pet cow too, I hate them!

In just a few weeks of rumors, it seems that WotC is not only killing (or at least wounding) nearly all sacred cows, but they're going farther and change things that nobody was expecting (e.g. the elemental planes)... But at this point, having started the "killing spree", I am getting more and more satisfied if they keep going and change as much as possible for two reasons:

1. As I said, I don't think this D&D is already anymore the D&D we've known. Let's still call it D&D, but at this point perhaps OD&D+AD&D1e+2e+3.0+3.5 were the first era D&D, and 4e is the second era D&D. I've stopped thinking of 4e in comparison with 3e, and instead I'm looking at it as something totally new by itself. Once that is accepted, it doesn't matter anymore how much of the rest will be different compared to the past.

2. The more they change, the more likely every single gamer will dislike at least 1 of the big changes. That hopefully will mean that very few if any will have the privilege of 4e having done exactly what they wanted, and will put back a little balance (and friendship) within the D&D community

 

[Samnell]

How is that?

It's a matter of taste whether you like that kind of thing, but I figured the much of the point of "points of light" is to leave plenty of room for individual groups to do what they want without feeling it doesn't fit the setting.

It is a matter of taste, sure. I powerfully loathe the frontier holds/kingdom/keep on the borderlands trope. It's boring. We must all have done it dozens, if not hundreds, of times in our years gaming. It's a dual-wielding good-aligned drow and a wizard with a big pointy hat. I realized sometime in 2001 that setting games far off the beaten path limited me infinitely more than setting them in the most obscenely detailed portion of the most heavily detailed campaign setting I've ever read. Setting details do not close off avenues for me. They're easy to ignore.

The lack of setting detail leaves me with blank spaces I'm obligated to fill whether I'm so inclined or not, but it limits me in what can go there without breaking the verisimilitude. I can't just drop a metropolis in somewhere a day's ride over some hills, because they don't just appear overnight and someone would surely have noticed it even with bad roads. Likewise I can't have the fortress of evil fiend army #16 there, because their foragers would have raped, pillaged, and burned the hamlet the first level adventurers all came from already. Either I have to do all the work upfront, or I have to accept that filling gaps on the fly is going to create setting issues. I'd rather have no setting in the game at all, with the only setting implications arising directly from the operation of the rules themselves.

I was thrilled to learn from Rich Baker's blog that they didn't intend to give the points treatment to established worlds. Then I discovered the FR changes and concluded he was being a lot less than candid. I can ignore those things, and intend to. But I don't appreciate the apparent duplicity involved and it's served to further sour me on the concept.

I guess ultimately, setting was never in my way to begin with. Points of light, in addition to not being at all what I want aesthetically, is less tools to use too.

 

[Exen Trik]

I'm optimistic about it. They seem to be addressing some of the same issues I had with the game, and hitting on some great ideas. Whether the execution of them will be good is another matter, but even in the worst case scenario there will still be plenty of ideas and mechanics to pillage and use towards my own ends.

 

[Branduil]

Then I heard about abandoning having a unified rules system for monsters.

They never said there wouldn't be a unified rules system for monsters. It won't be the same as it is in 3.x, but they didn't say there was no system.

Then I heard about advancing monsters being more "art" than "science".

Advancing monsters was an art in 3.x too. You can't just slap a template or levels on a Monster and expect the CR to match properly.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I was surprised at the announcement, and hoped that they would take the opportunity for a root and branch re-think of D&D.

So far I've been pleased with almost everything that I've heard. I like the anticipation of a new edition, and while it remains to be seen how everything works out in practice I am cautiously optimistic.

Regards

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Neutral.

I was surprised by the announcement but am now over the initial shock and have accepted the inevitable.

Some of the mechanical changes are interesting and sound positive. Some of the fluff changes I find downright disturbing. The whole digital business I find irrelevant, and I'd rather see Dragon/Dungeon back in print than the advertised digital tools. So I'll need to learn more to get off the fence one way of another.