D&D 4E Why I'm "Meh" About 4E

[The Little Raven]

Blah! No one cares about the Planescape camp! As a Planescape fan, what does 4E have to offer me besides the annihilation of everything I know I like?

More potential players than Planescape ever could? There's a reason it was cancelled before 2nd Edition ended, and it has everything to do with popularity (enough that Dancey notes that overwhelming customer feedback demonstrated that their majority didn't want the jargon-filled world of Planescape).

 

[Khairn]

Blah! No one cares about the Planescape camp! As a Planescape fan, what does 4E have to offer me besides the annihilation of everything I know I like?

Honestly, IMHO not much. Annihilation is about right. Pretty much every significant element of Planescape fluff has been eliminated. Now Mourn is right, you might get some additional players for a game, but if you're playing 4E, it probably won't look anything like the Planescape you've known.

 

[helium3]

I'm not the original poster, but why can't that be the fundamental difference. One guy likes one thing, one guy likes many different things.

Well sure. But usually subjective opinions on things like ice-cream flavors and RPG settings either aren't very strongly held (yes, I know that's hard to believe but I think it's true) or there's some line of reasoning behind the strongly held opinion.

Why do I like lots of different settings? To put it simply, I like variety but I also like thematic consistency. So, to get variety and allow each setting to have its own theme (which is why I'm generally not a huge fan of a "kitchen sink" setting like the Forgotten Realms) I need to periodically change the setting I'm playing in or running. It does me no good to just add on another clunky bit of stuff to the setting.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Or I can just ignore 4e. Certainly easier on my pocket book than buying a game to ignore a third of the races and classes.

See, I'm not sure I get this argument.

Let's say 4e does a good job with the "old-school core" races and classes - fighters, humans, elves, etc. Why would it then bother you to have a few pages you're not going to use on tieflings and dragonborn?

I can sympathize with complaints about stuff getting left out, but I have trouble understanding complaints about stuff that gets put in. Especially from an "old-school D&D" fan who has witnessed thirty years of "kitchen-sink" campaign worlds like Greyhawk and FR.

 

[Stogoe]

Blah! No one cares about the Planescape camp! As a Planescape fan, what does 4E have to offer me besides the annihilation of everything I know I like?

...New things? New ideas, new creativity? New players? The possibility that you might find something you like better than Planescape?

You know what? Nevermind.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I believe the primary reason WotC has added them to the line-up of PC races is because players are growing tired of the conventional fantasy races like the dwarf and elf. I'm not tired of them

So you recognise that players are growing tired of conventional fantasy races, but because you aren't tired of them, Wizards of the Coast shouldn't make these changes?

Please.

Imagine sitting down to play a 3E game to hear the DM tell you "Sorry, but elves don't exist in my world."

Well, it would have happened long before you sat down to play, but if I run any other setting than Eberron that is exactly what you would hear from me. I really loathe The Lord of the Rings, so I don't use Tolkienesque races - especially elves - unless they're completely reinvented . . . and I don't see a profit in making that kind of effort myself for my own settings.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Blah! No one cares about the Planescape camp! As a Planescape fan, what does 4E have to offer me besides the annihilation of everything I know I like?

I'm a huge Planescape fan, and it doesn't bother me. Nothing prevents me from using the old setting information with the new rules.

 

[maggot]

I can sympathize with complaints about stuff getting left out, but I have trouble understanding complaints about stuff that gets put in. Especially from an "old-school D&D" fan who has witnessed thirty years of "kitchen-sink" campaign worlds like Greyhawk and FR.

I doubt the new races and classes are only going to take up a few pages. The races, maybe, but the classes like warlock will take up a lot more. The core races will take up space in every supplement as they show off the dragonborn bard in the bard splatbook or the tiefling monk in the monk splat. Etc.

Core races and classes are hard to ignore because they are in every freaking piece of expansion material. Goliaths are easy to ignore in 3.5 because they are in exactly one book. Dragonborn in 4.0 will be in nearly ever book and adventure published whether by Wizards or third parties.

True you could go to the work of removing these races from 4.0 material, or you could just ignore those pages. Or you could just not use 4.0 and not have to ignore them.

 

[Gallo22]

[Bold face is mine, for emphasis.] This is exactly the type of post that starts flame wars. It may not look like D&D to you, but there is nothing that makes the style of D&D you prefer to be the one and only definition of D&D. There is something incredibly elitist and narrow about saying: 4e won't look like D&D because I don't like X, Y and Z and they're in the game.

No, actually, comments like this are why flame wars start. The author of this thread gave an honest and fair resson from his opinion. It's posters like yu that always want to start something. And I've seen you make similar comment in the past..

You are why I don't visit this site much any more... :\

 

[Gundark]

It looks like 4E is shaping up to be a great game. It just doesn't look like it is shaping up to be D&D. When I think of D&D, it conjures up images of elf mages and dwarf fighters locked in battle against orcs and dragons.

Sigh...I know I'm wasting my breath...er.... energy typing this....but why don't you at least wait and see the game before deciding that it's not D&D