The Line Between Cautious Optimism and Utter Apathy

[John Quixote]

A couple of months ago, I found myself so fed up with the revised 3rd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons that I just couldn't bear to play it anymore. (And make no mistake, folks, just because WotC dropped the "Advanced" from the title in 2000 as a marketing ploy to draw in younger blood, by no means does that mean that 3e was anything but the most rules-heavy incarnation of D&D ever.) For seven years, I tried to play 3e and 3.5 and to run campaigns that felt like they used to, games that were immersive for the DM as well as the players, but something was always missing. No set of house rules ever really felt right, even when I decided to try running 3e after chucking feats, attacks of opportunity, and prestige classes out the window. The unlimited plethora of options (especially multiclassing) still made something feel off. Not wrong or bad, just off. Not the game that I had remembered having so much fun playing.

So lately, I decided to drop 3e like a bad habit. I switched the current campaign I was running back to AD&D 2e (since the conversion was easiest), and I decreed that from then on, any new campaigns I started would use the best, simplest, least-advanced version of the game: the last incarnation of OD&D (ostensibly OD&D 5th edition, if you consider the original game to be OD&D 1st edition, Holmes Basic to be the 2nd, B/X the 3rd, BECMI the 4th, and the Black Box/Rules Cyclopedia to be the 5th). I love classic D&D, and I discovered after playing a few one-shots that I was very happy with those old rules - the feel was the same, the fun was there, the soul was back.

I'm convinced now that there is but a finite ammount of creative energy flowing around the game table at any given time, and this energy can be expended on either the immersion in the story, the fantasy, the role-playing; or dealing with numbers and rules. Don't get me wrong here -- I'm not that "diceless role-playing, Vampire-LARPing pansy" type of gamer. I used to defend with all my heart and soul the notion tha role-playing and roll-playing were perfectly compatible, not mutually exclusive. I really used to believe it. But 7 years of 3e proved me wrong and nearly killed my desire to play D&D altogether.

So... now, along comes 4e. And I hear good things and bad. The good? Encounters are meant to be scenes of a story. Monsters have a role, not just a type and a set of stats. The monsters are obstacles on the battlefield, and battlefields in 4e are going to be all about large numbers of monsters (rather than one BBEG) as well as interesting and interactive terrain features. Fewer classes, fewer skills, easier combat rules, fast-and-loose magic-item creation. These are the rumors I've heard floating around that I like.

The bad? Playing a characer will be all about building a character, *even more* than it was in 3e. You get a spiffy new toy at every experience level, either a feat or a racial ability or a class talent. This is just... the worst thing I've ever heard. Hands down. I can't shudder with enough revulsion. Not because it smacks of video games (after all, I love video games and I love it when D&D feels like a good video game), but because it means that even more than it has been for the past seven years, characters will now be collections of "perks" (a la point-buy style RPGs) coupled with a list of numbers, rather than the simple set of stats and the oodles of personality that used to be what defined characers previous to D&D's Y2K overhaul.

For the next several months, I will continue to play AD&D 2e and OD&D. And I will wait, somewhere between utter apathy and cautious optimism that the 4th edition of (Advanced!) Dungeons & Dragons will have a little more heart than 3e had. Hey, if it proves easier to DM than 3e did, by delivering the promised cutdown on "DM prep time", that alone will be worth it. But more likely than not, I'll probably just wind up pirating the ideas I like and porting them into OD&D 5e.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

Jack, my friend, I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you've written here, 100%. You've summed up my feelings exactly. There was a time when completing the objectives in an adventure (kill the dragon, rescue the princess, whatever) was a reward in and of itself; in the later days of 3.5, the only "reward" that players seem satisfied with is more and more KEWL POWRZ. Like you, attempting to DM 3.5 nearly killed me. I appreciate what you said about the finite amount of creative energy at the gaming table; with 3.5 that energy is almost entirely dominated by rules minutae [sic?] and number crunching.

Like you, I'm flirting with older versions of the game. I love AD&D 1e/2e (I play a hybrid of the two), yet finding players is damn near impossible.

And finally, like you, I'm hopeful about 4e. Will it bring me back? Will it be what I had always hoped 3.0/3.25/3.45/3.5 would be?

We shall see. :\

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I can't help but have a small hope that 4e will be a decent game. BUT, as Frankenstein's monster started out at an attempt to create life, I think 4e will take the monster of 3e and pump it full of steroids.

And finally, like you, I'm hopeful about 4e. Will it bring me back? Will it be what I had always hoped 3.0/3.25/3.45/3.5 would be?

We shall see. :\

 

[JoeGKushner]

I give this rant a 7.

It's missing any soul crushing hate, but it has a beat you can dance to.

 

[psionotic]

Weird. Having DM'ed mostly non stop since 3.x came out, I have to say I rarely noticed the powers and abilities my PCs had, and concerns over them never touched my mind. My brain has always been just too full of story, character, and pacing concerns to really notice. Besides, I always felt I could find core monsters or craft NPCs that could challenge them.

It wasn't until the second to last session of my game that just ended, at L13, that I finally noticed that the party Beguiler had taken a level of wildmage to cheese some random caster level increase thing...

...But, y'know what? I just game him a wry smile and kept the game going. As long as my players roleplay as much as rollplay, and as long as no one *breaks* the game, I'm good. So far, it hasn't been an issue.

One other point: I'm hoping that, by giving each class something fun at each level, it will actually encourage people *not* to multiclass, or to trawl through dozens of books for some incredible build. The antithesis of 3.x as well as 2.x (er, remember the elven fighter/mage/thief being the only good choice, or 'kits' being many times stronger than the classes that spawned them?)

The last few days' info has upgraded my optimism from "cautious" to "Oh man, my hopes are too high, I'm screwed." Why? Its not character abilities that anger me; its slow, unwieldy mechanics that slow the game down, force us to look up arcane (and inane) charts, and ruin the pacing of my adventures, especially at high levels.

So Wizards, bring on 4e..! And gamers, play the version of the game that you love best..!

 

[Fifth Element]

One other point: I'm hoping that, by giving each class something fun at each level, it will actually encourage people *not* to multiclass, or to trawl through dozens of books for some incredible build. The antithesis of 3.x as well as 2.x (er, remember the elven fighter/mage/thief being the only good choice, or 'kits' being many times stronger than the classes that spawned them?)

Excellent point. Maybe we will see an end to 2-level fighter dips, and characters with 4-5 classes if their first class is more interesting to play.

As for the OP, the lack of hate is nice, but it's just another rant among thousands these days.

 

[outsider]

Over on the WoTC boards, they call this "The Stormwind Fallacy". Just because you want to play a powerful character with lots of cool abilities, that doesn't neccessarily mean that you don't also want to roleplay that character. Roleplay and game mechanics aren't mutually exclusive. Special abilities like feats and such are part of the game now, and they will only continue to become a bigger part. Being the same mechanically as every other fighter is just as boring as having the same personality as every other fighter, and Wizards realises that.

On the bright side though, it sounds like you are returning to good old Rules Compendium D&D. IMHO, Rules Compendium is the second best form of D&D there is, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anybody that loves D&D but for whatever reason doesn't like extensive character options. I wouldn't call it the least advanced version of the game at all, there's alot of good stuff in there that puts AD&D 1st and 2nd ed to shame.

Hope you and your group have fun! I know I always did when we broke out the Rules Compendium. Maybe a return to the basics will put things in perspective for you and your group.

 

[Hairfoot]

Before someone says "flee this thread before someone mentions C&C!", I'm mentioning C&C. You might like it.

 

[Piratecat]

I give this rant a 7.

It's missing any soul crushing hate, but it has a beat you can dance to.

Is this post adding anything to the conversation? No, it is not. So give the snarky asides a rest; if you don't like the topic, don't post in the thread.

That goes for everyone, folks. We're tired of people calling "troll" just because someone is discussing something they don't agree with.

 

[John Quixote]

Over on the WoTC boards, they call this "The Stormwind Fallacy". Just because you want to play a powerful character with lots of cool abilities, that doesn't neccessarily mean that you don't also want to roleplay that character. Roleplay and game mechanics aren't mutually exclusive. Special abilities like feats and such are part of the game now, and they will only continue to become a bigger part. Being the same mechanically as every other fighter is just as boring as having the same personality as every other fighter, and Wizards realises that.

On the bright side though, it sounds like you are returning to good old Rules Compendium D&D. IMHO, Rules Compendium is the second best form of D&D there is, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anybody that loves D&D but for whatever reason doesn't like extensive character options. I wouldn't call it the least advanced version of the game at all, there's alot of good stuff in there that puts AD&D 1st and 2nd ed to shame.

Hope you and your group have fun! I know I always did when we broke out the Rules Compendium. Maybe a return to the basics will put things in perspective for you and your group.

And the Stormwind Fallacy, long as it has been around (so long that, like the Oberoni Fallacy, it's become something of a tradition-bound buzz-word), is still controversial to say the least. I'm now certian that it's utter bunk and about as trustworthy as an Elvis sighting.

But, yes, I am using the Rules 'Cyclopedia version now! And yes, it's fun! The limited options actually do something -- paradox though it may seem, it actually forces players who would not be good role-players otherwise (and sadly, I seem to be surrounded by such players -- for every one player who can really get into a role, I typically find myself stuck with four or five who just want "kewl powers", stats above 20, and three-digit hit point totals) to actually come up with consistent and playable personality traits, vocal ticks, and other such things that make the game fun and which differentitate Fred Fighter from Joe Fighter. It's something that just doesn't happen, period, when these sorts of players are confronted with which class level or feat to take next.

For Classic D&D, I would even go so far as to theorize that the key to it all is race classes. Humans can be fighters, clerics, thieves, magic-users, or mystics; but elves are elves, dwarves are dwarves, and halflings are halflings. This is leading me towards and interesting thought-experiment... could I use the 3e rules to "build a replica" of basic?

Disallow feats, most prestige classes, and multi-classing... restrict humans to the "generic" warrior, spell-caster, and expert type classes, restrict non-humans to fully-fleshed-out "racial paragon" classes. This notion might even work better with 4e, given what we know about how races and classes will work.

Too much work to be practical, of course ("Why not just go ahead and play Classic?"), but it's interesting to ponder. Huh. I guess I'm not so apathetic about the advent of 4e anymore.