So, what can you tell me about the new game?
A few things ...
Fourth Edition gives characters interesting things to do and interesting choices to make during each round of combat. For example, characters always have some cool at-will powers they can use even after they've used up their "heavy artillery."
The game makes the DM's life easier in many ways. For one thing, monsters are more fun to play. A monster doesn't need thirty spell-like abilities to be cool. Given that the typical monster has a lifespan of 3 to 5 rounds, it really only needs one or two 'signature' abilities in addition to its normal attacks. The new game also makes it a lot easier for the DM to determine appropriate challenges for the party with an encounter-building system that's much more intuitive than the current EL/CR system. It also doesn't hurt that we'll have a data-driven, plug-n-play encounter builder tool on D&D Insider.
The 4E game system also speeds up round-by-round combat by smoothing out some of the clunky or less-intuitive mechanics. For example, we've made attacks of opportunity dirt-simple by reducing the number of things that provoke AoOs and keeping the list short, intuitive, and free of exceptions. We've also made it so that no single player's turn takes a lot longer than any other player's turn by eliminating things that cause players to stall on their turns (the shapechange spell as currently written is a fine example).
Why not release all three 4th Edition core books — the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Manual — at the same time?
Releasing three core rulebooks in one month is too much of a strain on retailers. Many of them don’t have the money to stock up on that much gaming product in one month.
Do you feel you may face backlash from players who enjoy 3.0 and 3.5 and don’t want to upgrade their rules or campaigns?
We faced a similar situation with the change from 2nd Edition to 3rd Edition, so we assume that not every 3rd-Edition player will switch over to the new game overnight. All in all, 4th Edition offers a much better gaming experience for players and Dungeon Masters. Even though 3rd Edition is an excellent game, 4th Edition gives players better character options at every level, makes DM-ing less of a chore, and (as mentioned above) speeds up round-by-round combat. I expect that the improvements in game play will convince even reluctant players to switch over to 4th Edition. I also anticipate that the majority of d20 publishers will support 4th Edition going forward.
What’s the role of Gleemax vis-a-vis D&D Insider? What kinds of Gleemax tools will players be able use with their Insider subscriptions, and will there be any Insider-exclusive Gleemax material?
Gleemax provides D&D players with free access to a central repository of fan-created D&D content as well as a social network that includes customizable personal pages, blogs, friends lists, calendars, and more. Gleemax will also allow D&D players to store their characters and campaign notes in “vaults” that can be made public or private by the individual user. Some additional features of the Character Vault and Campaign Vault may be available to D&D Insider subscribers only, but the exact details and features have yet to be determined.
We’ve been reading a lot about talent trees in 4th Edition, similar to those in Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo and World of Warcraft games. Will 4th Edition characters progress similarly to those in an MMORPG and was this sort of play dynamic the inspiration for the new 4th Edition rules?
Talent trees aren’t unique to MMORPGs. Wizards has produced other games that use talent trees, such as the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game and the Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition. The theory of game design, regardless of platform, is constantly evolving. We’ve taken our gaming experiences over the past decade, as well as player feedback on the games and supplements we’ve produced in that time period, to build a system for character creation and advancement in 4th Edition that draws inspiration from numerous sources, but isn’t exactly like anything that’s been done before.
The “Vancian” fire-and-forget magic system has been a D&D staple since the system was created — yet it’s also one that never seems to be emulated in either the paper and pencil or video game world and is often criticized for being unwieldy and for slowing down games. Now it seems as though 4th Edition is bowing to the inevitable. Are you completely abandoning the classic “Vancian” magic system? What will replace it? Is this an example of the video game world bleeding back to the tabletop universe?
It’s safe to say that the “Vancian” spellcasting system has received as much scrutiny as every other aspect of the D&D game. One thing we don’t want is a character running out of cool things to do in combat. In 4th Edition, all characters have a selection of at-will, per-encounter, and per-day resources. The exact mechanical execution of this base concept will be disclosed in the coming months on D&D Insider and the Wizards Presents: Races and Classes preview book, so no spoilers here!
It seems as though many of the changes and new rules in 4th Edition were inspired or emulate the ease-of-use of the current generation of MMO (World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and the like). How has the popularity of such systems affected D&D and how has it contributed to creation of 4th Edition’s game systems?
Just as MMOs have looked to the D&D game for inspiration, so too have we learned a few things from MMOs. (And not just MMOs, but games of all kinds.) However, the D&D game is not an MMO, nor are we turning it into one. As it happens, certain things that work well in MMOs also work well in RPGs. For example, we like the idea of being able to create different “builds” within a single character class, so that one player’s 5th-level fighter can look and feel different than another player’s 5th-level fighter. This is something we experimented with in various other game products produced by Wizards in recent years.
We've been reading a lot about class roles and how creating clearly defined roles (and different ways of approaching those roles) are a large part of what will differentiate 4th Edition. Is this inspired by the MMO party foundation of tank, healer, dps, and crowd control? If so, do you anticipate having the same issues with hybrid classes, like WoW's Paladin, Druid, and Shaman?
Party roles existed in 3rd Edition, but they were never discussed openly in the core rules. We simply assumed that a typical group of players would know enough to make sure their party included a front-line fighter-type character, a cleric or other healer-type character, a wizard or other artillery-type character, and so forth. In the interest of helping less-experienced players build stronger parties, we’ve addressed the issue of party composition more openly and directly in 4th Edition by explaining party roles and the importance of having characters who can fill these roles. Each base class in 4th Edition has been designed to fill a specific role, but that’s not all the class aims to do, and every base class has things that it can do outside of its primary role.
What are the first video games we'll see using the 4th Edition mechanics? Do you expect Turbine’s Dungeons & Dragons Online and BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights toolset to adopt 4th Edition?
No licensing plans have been announced at this time, and nothing is likely to be announced until after the 4th Edition rules are finalized.
