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

[Voss]

Honest question - Does the fact that playtester reports say that they feel it is a better version of D&D have any impact on those folks who say the game doesn't look like D&D to them?

Probably not.
Here's the thing about playtester reports. For them to be meaningful, they have to be done by someone the intended recipients know, trust and they should ideally looking for the same kind of things in the game. Anonymous voices on the internet don't really supply that. The only thing they do is reinforce the opinions of people who are already sold on 4e and who know the people supplying the reports.

Failing that, they need to supply a fair amount of mechanical detail. Which, yeah, they can't give at this time. So, honestly its something that should have waited until they can actually give a review, rather than vague reassurances to a wide audience. An audience, it should be pointed out, which is large enough that it can't possibly want all of the same things out of the game.

 

[Dire Lemming]

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

You know what? Nevermind.

Hm, I don't think you'd say that if you knew about Planescape. Planescape is literally omnipotent. It is anything and everything that is D&D, and more than all of it. ... ... Given that fact, I'm not sure what I'm worried about actually.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

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.

Are there any classes other than warlock that worry you? Warlord is the only other newbie, and it really seems easy to work into any campaign setting. And while I'll admit to not knowing the specifics of Greyhawk very well, the 4e warlock seems flexible enough that you could fit it in as a PC class if you had to. (Fey-pact and maybe shadow-pact warlocks seem viable to me, anyway.)

I know I'm sounding like an apologist here, but I'm thinking that even if you have a kneejerk reaction against the "evil-curious" diabolic-pact warlock archetype that's been showing up in a lot of previews, the mechanics of the class itself may well be worth taking a look at. I'm betting that when the PHB comes out, or failing that when a decent warlock splatbook comes out with some great new pacts, a lot of former "haters" are going to be revising their estimation of the class.

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.

Most D&D settings I can think of already have "lizardmen" of some sort, even if only as bad guys (Dragonlance). Ditto part-demons. If you don't want your PCs playing them, that's fine, but does it really matter if they show up as NPCs every once in a while?

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.

Looking back at my 3e books, I NEVER used about a third of the PHB because I hated Vancian spellcasting and thus never played a wizard. Not to mention various sections on mounted combat, fighting underwater, mundane equipment, the difference between a halberd and a trident, artifacts, a billion and seven magic items, sample towns, roleplaying advice, directions on how to fill out a character sheet, bards, random treasure and encounter tables, and 90% of the MM.

I never really considered this a "waste," because I knew OTHER people found all of that stuff helpful, or even necessary.

WotC has made a pretty good case, IMO, for why dragonborn and tieflings are entering the core. Most people in this thread, including the OP, seem to be under the impression that a lot of players are going to want to play these races, which further confirms that it's not a bad inclusion for many. So while I can certainly understand why you personally might dislike these new guys and wish WotC had put something else in their place, I can't imagine refusing to play a game system I really liked because it had a couple easily removable classes or races I didn't like.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This thread is surprisingly civil. Congrats to everyone.

NPCs that don't join the players in combat are the easiest thing to alter race on. Personally, if a mondule said that the barkeep was "A burly half-orc" I'd say he was a big ugly human. (I don't have a problem with someone playing a half-orc, but I don't like them, and i would like them to be rare enough in any campaign of mine that there'd be one, maybe two appear in the whole storyline.)

The same thing should be easy enough for people who don't like dragonborn or teiflings.

As bad guys, on the other hand, they're all good.

Fitz

 

[maggot]

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

Probably for the same reasons that people have decided they will love it without seeing it. The point of marketing is to inform people of your product so they can choose to buy it or not. Wizards marketing of 4E had made me go "Meh" like the OP.

 

[maggot]

Are there any classes other than warlock that worry you? Warlord is the only other newbie, and it really seems easy to work into any campaign setting. And while I'll admit to not knowing the specifics of Greyhawk very well, the 4e warlock seems flexible enough that you could fit it in as a PC class if you had to. (Fey-pact and maybe shadow-pact warlocks seem viable to me, anyway.)

I don't run Greyhawk. You must have me confused with someone else. I've seen warlocks in 3E/3.5, and I don't care for them. With them it is more than a flavor problem with me.

When I drill down to what I don't like about 4E, what leaves me "meh", someone reduces my complaints to exactly that one thing. If it were just warlocks, I'd probably be mostly excited about 4E. Same if it were just tieflings and dragonborn, or rearranged cosmos, or one of millions of other individually small-to-medium changes, things would be different. But no, it is a sum of millions of individually small-to-medium changes that adds to "meh".

So while I can certainly understand why you personally might dislike these new guys and wish WotC had put something else in their place, I can't imagine refusing to play a game system I really liked because it had a couple easily removable classes or races I didn't like.

And I can't imagine really liking a game that I had to remove a bunch of stuff from to get to a point where I liked it. Every splatbook, every adventure would remind me that I'm playing the wrong game.

 

[pogre]

Why not take the mechanics for the races you do not like for flavor reasons and superimpose them on more palatable races from your campaign? Dragonborn equal hobgoblins, Tieflings equal gnolls, Eladrin equal Gray Elves - or whatever works for you. Your players get the "fun" mechanics, you get to keep the campaign flavor the way you want it.

Just a thought.

 

[Callikah]

i think wotc will change a major character from greyhawk into a warlock when they get around to doing a world book for that setting so i wouldnt rule warlocks out as a playable class in greyhawk yet.

as for planescape and other older settings i just hope someone does something good with em using 4e (especially al quadim, dark sun and planescape)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

For years attempting to run 3.5 I have cringed when players requested playing a tiefling or half-dragon in my Greyhawk campaign. There simply isn't much of a precedent for it if you want to stick to the original setting materials. And for that matter, I think with magic items and spells and psionics, player characters already have plenty going for them. Supernatural heritage should be left, I feel, for the monsters and opponents, at least when running a classic campaign like Greyhawk. But with so much of the game recently designed to hand players these options, it is very frustrating for me to deny it to them.

A rolled-up newspaper and shouting "NO!" when faced with such requests worked for me every time.

 

[Dire Lemming]

Probably for the same reasons that people have decided they will love it without seeing it. The point of marketing is to inform people of your product so they can choose to buy it or not. Wizards marketing of 4E had made me go "Meh" like the OP.

Wha? I thought that the point of marketing was to convince as many people as possible that they will like your product regardless of whether or not they actually will so that they'll give you their money. :\