D&D 4E Mouseferatu weighs in on 4e

[Wulf Ratbane]

As far as the cranky DM's who don't want beginner DM help cluttering up their book -- easy enough to skip.

In all my years of playing D&D (25+ now) I have never read any DMG from cover to cover, nor looked to it for any information other than to reference the raw rules. Pretty much just magic items and tables.

Well, I am sure I read the 1e DMG cover to cover, but only because I had a young, empty head desperate to absorb anything and everything about our wonderful hobby.

I really don't give a damn what they put in the DMG as long as the rules I need are there.

 

[xechnao]

4E is roughly dead-center as far as I can tell.

If this calibration seems to be something actively engineered would it be possible to have a clue on who is behind it? It is about the fluff that I am interested and asking first place.

 

[rkanodia]

The Lone Ranger.

Have Gun - Will Travel.

 

[Scribble]

I'm happy. I think these changes are going to be GUUUUUR'EAT (as the wise old cat would say) for the game...

For the first time in it's long history, I think D&D will be playable "right out of the box."

1. The implied setting helps newbies just play, and not really worry yet about where they're playing. A good thing in my opinion. I remember when I got the Rules Cyclopedia. It had little snippets of "The Known World of Mystara..." it wasn't complete, but it was a world. It got my mind racing to fill in the blanks. Instead of just, "uhhh there's a cave, you fight some stuff..." the world came alive, and there was a reason for that cave. Soon I found myself building an entire setting, stealing what I liked, skipping what I didn't. It was a great learning tool.

2. DDI helps newbies just jump online and get into a game. No more searching out a band of dorks to game with. I can almost guarantee there will be "newbie" games almost regularly on the DDI. I'm even guessing they'll mention it in the books. "Hop over to the virtual game table and jump into one of our tutorial games to get started..."

 

[catsclaw227]

Which is what I do for 3.5. Paizo saved my hobby by providing me with a large number of statblocks all stringed together with a narrative. However, 4E is being presented in such a way that I am starting to think I might be able to homebrew again like I did back in the day because it won't take me the entire weekend to put together one adventure. I barely manage to squeeze in a game, much less the hours of prep required to do anything interesting with the 3.5 rules.

I don't agree at all. WotC is making it much easier for me to participate in worldbuilding, which I used to do lots of before I had any serious real-world responsibilities to get in the way. I love doing it, and it's the chore-like task of creating statblocks for unique NPCs, new monsters, and the like that prevents me from doing it and has me purchasing adventure paths instead. By redesigning the system with both quicker enemy design and a larger amount of fluff text to mine for ideas, I can focus on personalizing my campaign.

This.

Hey, guess what? I got started on blue box too, and I want something completely different than you do. I guess these "back in my day, we played D&D with rocks and sticks, and we liked it! You kids these have no imagination!" comments that keep creeping into these 4E threads may perhaps be overgeneralizing.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that anyone we're addressing on these messageboards is a veteran player of many years, who started with 1st edition, if not OD&D, and format our generalizations about the origins of their preferred playstyle with that in mind. Those who do not agree with you are not just a bunch of 14-year old kids who got their heads rotted out with video games. And I mean no disrespect for actual 14-year-olds, who I find are generally more willing to think outside the box than 40-something grognards who absolutely must have things operate they way they've played it for the last 30 years or it "just isn't D&D anymore!!!1"

...and this.

I started in 1978, and I like the fluff, the lairs, the idea farms that appear in the W&M book, the implied setting, and presumably in the 4e MM. I liked MMIV and MMV.

I have a demanding full-time job, a new home, and a baby on the way (and therefore a pregnant wife -- it has its own implications). I NEED the fluff to help me with stuff. If I take a published module (I am running AoW now) and I can outfit it with some stuff from my own campaign ideas, generated from fluff in other books like MMIV, then the game has served me well. I really don't have time to wolrd-build at the level that someone like Lizard likes to, even though I WANT to.

If 4e gives me the tools, the help, the pseudo-setting stuff like lairs and a town or two, then I am gonna be STOKED.

I can't wait to read about the new village/town in the DMG.

 

[Lizard]

Have Gun - Will Travel.

The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, Classic Trek, The A-Team, Knight Rider...

The model works. It works well, and it works VERY well for D&D. It makes most of the D&D tropes make a sorta kinda maybe sense if you don't look too closely. It's just not the only way to run a successful and fun D&D game, and mechanical support for other styles is welcome.

Deep Space Nine also is a great model for D&D -- the PCs are the defenders of the Town On The Frontier, with trouble Just Around The Corner. This works well as a hybrid between the classic 'rootless wanderers' D&D game and the 'full on politics and nation-states' D&D game -- there's a Big City somewhere off in the distance, where things are Civilized and Calm, but here, on the borderlands...not so much. Just beyond the well-guarded fields are strange and twisted realms, and no one knows precisely who...or what...that stranger who just walked down Main Street is. This type of setting, which I've used in several campaigns, lets you juggle politics/roleplaying/relationships and good ol' dungeon crawling very well, and it's a natural evolution from My First Campaign. Just start fleshing out one of those previously faceless towns, give the PCs reasons to keep coming back to it, being its protectors, give it strange secrets and stranger citizens, and you've gone from hack&slash to something a bit deeper without every noticing the shift.

 

[LEHaskell]

Have Gun - Will Travel.

lol. That was Paladin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Gun,_Will_Travel

 

[Just Another User]

I understand the "problem" some people had in that you were spending combat potential points on something you didn't really need for adventuring. I get that, but I have to think there is a better way to deal with the issue than just removing it. Heck SR4s knowledge skill system is better IMO. Or even something similar to D&Ds 2es non-weapon proficiencies let people trade in language skills for other fluff skills like carpentry.

I thought about 2e NWP, too. I actually quote liked them as a system. From what has been told of 4e feats it shouldn't be too hard adapt them to something like 2nd NWPs, after all feat are suppossed to not be indispensable for combat balance and you should get a load of them, so you could afford to "waste" one or two to be a good smith, or tailor, or something else, if you want to.

 

[mudbunny]

I have a demanding full-time job, a new home, and a baby on the way (and therefore a pregnant wife -- it has its own implications).

Congrats!! As someone who has recently gone through that (my daughter is 3 months on the 8th) I know what you are about to go through. Plan for a short hiatus from DMing until your baby picks up a regular schedule.

If 4e gives me the tools, the help, the pseudo-setting stuff like lairs and a town or two, then I am gonna be STOKED.

I can't wait to read about the new village/town in the DMG.

I agree with this. Anything that makes my life (Wife, 2 daughters under 3) as a DM easier is a good thing. Especially when you consider that I am just learning to be a DM.

 

[jonrog1]

Mr. Rogers:

It came up on another board that someone took your "What else besides basic combat? Roleplaying!" statement as indicative of the complete absence of anything non-combat, non-roleplaying, like stealth or investigation.

I thought that was a bit of a narrow reading, I took you to mean "in the stat block", not that such things were absent from the game entirely.

Could you clarify?

Correct, I meant in the stat block. And you've got to know how skills work, and also just the looser design philosophy that ... arrrrg NDA.