Reading 4e

[Allister]

I look at everyone who read the WotC Presents books and various Design and Development articles and responded on message boards with this:

"Golden Wyvern Adept? I don't want that in my game!"

"I'm using X setting, I don't want to have to rewrite clerics to fit it"

"Bael Turath? No thank you."

"Make the game generic; so that we can use for our own worlds."

I BLAME YOU PEOPLE! YOU KILLED THE 4E FLUFF THAT MAKES D&D INTERESTING READING!

...

I feel better now.

Seriously, when they broke powers from paragraphs to stat-blocks, it made everything easy to look up (and easy to code) but boring to read.

THIS

I distinctly remember pre-4E release many, MANY people screaming they didn't want "FLUFF" in their game description.

Andor, you should've stepped up back then and told them "YES, I do want FLUFF"

 

[Thasmodious]

It's really an odd position you take here, Andor. You admit, further in your post, that you didn't enjoy reading 2e, 3e, 3.5, yet suddenly it's some source of criticism that 4e reads like a reference text, which is what it is. Reading all powers is as dull as reading all the spells, and those sections take up about the same amount of space in either book. OTOH, I enjoyed reading the 4e DMG. Not a lot or anything. The last RPG book I remember really enjoying reading was the Eberron CS. I don't require my gaming textbooks to be edge of your seat thrill-rides, myself. I'll take the great system of 4e over the boring read of 4e anyday.

 

[delericho]

Why are the descriptions of the spells and the feats in the 3rd edition handbook not dull, whereas 4th edition spells, rituals, feats and powers are, according to you?

For me, the key difference was that the 3e spells were all at the back of the PHB, which meant that by the time I got to reading this big wall of text I'd already learned enough of the system to start playing. With 4e, the 'wall' is early in the book, and made getting past it to the meat of the game quite painful.

That said, 4e has different needs than 3e in this regard, since every class has powers. I don't think the same arrangement would have worked for 4e, and neither can I immediately see a better arrangement.

What more "fluff" was there in the third edition player's handbook, compared to its 4th edition counterpart?

Each edition has seemed to strip out the flavour of the writing in favour of the clarity of the rules discussion. (And it's not just 'fluff' names like Bigby, or setting organisations, or what have you, but also includes the use of words, sentence structure, tone, and so forth.) AD&D 2nd Edition was written in simpler language than BECM D&D, 3e was much more of a textbook than was 2nd Edition, and 4e seems to have gone even further in this direction. To a point, it does actually make for a better game, but there is a danger that you reach a point where people just don't read your 832 pages of rulebook, and go play WoW instead. It would appear that 4e hasn't yet reached this point, given the sales it has seen, and the relative lack of second-hand books that are available.

For what it's worth, I found 4e read a whole lot better than I had feared from the previews, and played a whole lot better than it read. My group decided against it for other reasons.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

He's refering to 4th edition as being unpolished, and dull. That means that Andor thinks that the previous version is not unpolished, and more exciting to read. Quite easy, don't you think? You don't have to interprete much into it to see that this is going to end like that.

Also, it's an open secret that Andor belongs to the 4th edition critics. Heck, he even admits it in the very first posting above.

4th Edition Critic doesn't have to mean Edition Warrior. People can find every edition of D&D lack luster and still be a 4th Edition critic. Heck, people can even like 4th Edition and be a 4th Edition critic.

Sometimes comparing edition makes sense (particularly if you want to understand or classify changes), but sometimes it doesn't (for example, if you want to know if something reads interesting or not. )

Hey, look, a 3E spell written up in 4E edition style (but using 3E mechanics mostly)
[sblock]
Fireball - Wizard Daily Attack 5
A bead of fire shoots from your open hands and explodes in a fiery blast
Daily - Arcane, Implement, Fire, Verbal, Somatic
Standard Action
Area Spread 20 ft in Long Range (400 ft + 40 ft per level)
Target: All creatures in spread
Save: Reflex
Failure: 1d6 points of fire damage per level
Success: Half damage.

---
Entangle - Druid Daily Attack 1
Veins and Grass moves to grab your foes as you stretch out your arms and bid nature to your aid.
Daily - Divine, Implement, Plant, Verbal, Somatic
Standard Action
Area Spread 40 ft in Long Range (400 ft + 40 ft per level)
Target: All creatures in spread
Save: Reflex
Failure: Creature is entangled (save ends or until escaped)
Effect: Target is slowed (save ends or until escaped). A creature that enters the area or starts it turns in it must make a new save against this power. The power lasts 1 minute per level.
[/sblock]

 

[Jack99]

What do you think?

I think that 4e books are game books, written for gaming, not for reading. At least most of them. Parts of MP are good, as is most of Draconomicon. The rest more or less reads poorly.

But the game rocks

 

[wedgeski]

There's no doubt to me that 4E (so far -- I have hopes for MotP) is a less interesting read than previous editions. But then, I didn't really read earlier editions just for the sake of it either, with some exceptions (Lords of Madness, for example). To balance that, it's a much greater pleasure to use at the table, with clearer layouts and a focus on the stuff you actually need to look up.

 

[avin]

These questions above are something I'd like to see answered, so to better understand what irks people who are vehemently against the new edition and have to complain about it all the time, in this case about this "dulleness".

Here speaks a guy who likes 4E, DMs it and is a DDI subscriber: 4E reading is dull. MM4E is horrible. I can read any monster manual from AD&D to 3.5, Deadlands, CC I, II and III, Tome of Horrors, Gurps Bestiary... but the guy who wrote MM4E failed hard.

PHB 3.5 is far better reading than PHB 4.0
I like DMG 4E more than 3.5 tho.

 

[Shadeydm]

We have a thread about what people don’t like about 3E. It goes for 6+ pages everyone discusses their dislikes and gets along just fine. Someone starts a thread about just one little specific aspect of 4E that they don’t like and you get responses like “What more fluff was there in 3E?” “Why are you starting another anti 4E rant?” “Wow old news is so exciting.” Let us not forget” You just hate 4E no matter what!” And the new classic “I blame you!” and “They are for gaming not reading” which I guess means I can put the books under my pillow at night and learn the rules that way. I can just imagine what would have happened if the thread had been what don’t you like about 4E instead of just one little aspect of it.
I love how you guys keep making my point; there can be no criticism of 4E that doesn’t end in napalm but it is always open season on xE.

Personally while I agree with the OP and have personally failed at several attempts at reading the 4E PHB cover to cover I could say the same thing about the 3E and 3.5E versions too.

 

[Jhaelen]

I agree with the gist of what the op said: 4e rulebooks aren't a good read. Or as I wrote in a different thread: I've read laundry lists that were more exciting.

Since I'm not yet playing 4E this is a factor that keeps me from buying all of the 4e supplements, YET. But I guess that as soon as I start playing it, I'll want every single one of them. Because - judging from the reactions I've seen so far - it plays really well.

It's been almost the other way around with all of the WoD supplements I've bought: I really enjoyed reading them, but the actual gaming experience was somewhat lacking.

 

[billd91]

I think that 4e books are game books, written for gaming, not for reading. At least most of them. Parts of MP are good, as is most of Draconomicon. The rest more or less reads poorly.

But the game rocks

I don't believe the game rocks... but it's the clearest presentation of a D&D edition I've ever seen and one of the easiest rulebooks to refer to and that's exactly what it should be.

Now, coming from a long history of playing 1e through 3.5 and a little 4e, I don't have a lot of use for some of the non-rule text in my rulebooks anymore. Unless something really catches my eye as I skim... I just skim over it. I've been doing that for some years now. Do I know anything about the WotC flavor text before the prestige classes in the various 3.5 splatbooks? No. Never really read that info, just skimmed it lightly in my quest for clearly presented information I can use.

Do I have any use at all for that non-rule text? Sometimes I'll go back over it and read it through, like when I've got a few minutes here and there and want to see what the current edition's take on the topic is. But reading the rulebook through cover to cover? No. That style of reading I reserve for pleasure reading, not something I'm trying to learn and apply to the tabletop.