As for complaints, my biggest complaints are that wizards are much less fun to make. All wizards seem to be the same anymore. In fact, that's my complaint with all of the classes: they all seem too similar and it gives the feel of less variety. Character creation isn't very fun anymore either; I for one loved skill points because of the flexibility it gave the character (though I do like some of the changes like combining Hide and Move Silently into Stealth or whatever). My two favorite core classes are right out, as well: bard and monk.

Welcome to the latest version of the D&D website! Truth be told, you might not notice that much of a difference from yesterday’s version of the site

Let's just say that pretty much every internet geek on earth who wants to has got it already.

Its early and I'm still processing, but on the whole I think that its not too early to say "I told you so" about a few things:

1. No Rule 0. Yes, GMs can create house rules, but it does not appear that they can make rulings on the spot. In fact, in the section on how to deal with Rules Lawyers, one of the things that is most notable is that it DOESN'T tell you that you can just tell him to shut up or fuck off, or that you as GM overrule his knowledge of the rules. No, apparently you're supposed to apologize if you've made an error, or you're allowed to put off discussion till the end of the session, and the rules lawyer is allowed to take all the time he wants to look up the rule while his character exists in a limbo (and cannot be harmed by the monsters or anything else).

2. No treasure tables or random tables for magic items. Apparently the only random tables in the entire DMG are the random tables for generating dungeon maps and two d20-tables for NPC personalities.

3. The Encounter system seems to be set up as more than just "guidelines" or something just for beginners. Unless you essentially create a new, substitute encounter system; its such an essential structure of "how D&D works" in this edition, that you really can't just have the PCs wandering around encountering monsters at your own whim.

I'm sure there's lots of other stuff to talk about 4e, good and bad, and it'll come in time. But for starters, I just wanted to get my first I Told You So in there.

One should note, on the overall impression of this edition, that its a telling fact that when the gang of fuckers over at Storygames are all pissing their pants with joy at this new D&D, and people on regular RPG sites are upset about it. The designers of 4e have made no effort to hide what their real inspiration for this new edition was.

RPGPundit

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So, over on theRPGsite, there's a brand new thread where we see what for me is the best-written actual play I've seen of one of the 4e demos.

The highlites:

1. It confirms what was one of my primary concerns: power creep. 1st level characters each start with what the poster describes as about 8 "superpowers". Apparently, in the demo none of the player characters ever bothered to make a regular attack, not even once. Why bother, when their "at will" powers were always better? When something called "Mighty Cleaving" or "Lance of Faith" are first level at-will abilities, you kind of know the game is going to be a powergaming monstrosity.

2. The game certainly does seem to encourage "team" tactics; from the description it seems that players depended on one another immensely. But again, from the description it sounded like certain players (including the writer of the thread) spent most of their time doing some kind of "aid" role to the other players. This isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't entirely resolve the supposed problem of "someone has to bite the bullet and play the cleric".

3. The game will apparently be impossible to play without some kind of miniatures. Everything depends on positioning, on "squares", and if you're one of those gaming groups that doesn't like using a battlemat and squares and minis, then you're shit out of luck. But hey, we all knew that one was coming.

So to be fair, let's look at the ultimate good and bad from that post:

The ultimate good: "Overall, I enjoyed myself quite a bit"

The ultimate bad: "I did feel that the system took me out of character somewhat. I felt I was moving a piece in a minis game and not playing a character in a fight for his life."

RPGPundit

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4e: The Harrison Bergeron School of RPG Design
or Here Starts the Rebellion

For those of you who are unfamiliar, in other words, you were spared having to read it in junior high school english class, Harrison Bergeron is a science-fiction short story about a society where everyone is "equal". This equality has been achieved by taking great dancers and hobbling them with heavy weights so they won't be better than anyone else; taking people with high intelligence and implanting little shock-devices in their skulls so that they won't be able to think better than anyone else, etc etc.

In other words, it was the equality of the mediocre: anyone who was talented or skilled in any way was artificially restrained, to prevent them from being able to be better than the rest of the world.

4e design has reminded me of that short story, that I hadn't thought about in decades.

It is meant to hobble players who are good at roleplaying. "Give XP for Roleplaying? Why would we ever do that, it would just encourage the good roleplayers and make the bad ones feel bad!"
Instead, let's create a mechanics system that encourages everyone to pursue the utter mediocrity of "character build"; that any pathetic little obsessive can come to master by incessant hours of reading the books and figuring out all the tricks (utterly unrelated to emulation or immersion) by which you can manipulate the rules, bending them like pretzels, in order to get the "perfect" character.

And of course, its meant to hobble GMs more than anyone. Why should we have to count on having good GMs for a good experience? Sure, if we create a set of restrictive rules that railroad GMs into having to follow a kind of "campaign development Plan", where the designers TELL the GM what type of monsters he's ALLOWED to use, what type of treasure he MUST give them, what he's allowed to throw at them and what he most certainly isn't, regardless of the setting or the campaign or the particular tastes of the player that the GM knows well and the Game Designers don't fucking know at all, it means that we'll never end up with truly great GMs. The great GMs wouldn't be able to be great with 4e; not without changing so many rules that it will essentially be a different game. Most of them won't bother, they'll go off and play other things altogether.

But its a small price to pay! Because it means that bad GMs might just be almost mediocre. And mediocre GMs... well, they'll get to absolutely shine in their mediocrity! And without any of those truly good or great GMs to steal their spotlight!

After all, we can't have people just making of the game whatever they want to make of it, the way they used to in every other edition of the game! What would be the point of that??

No! We must create balance! We must create equality! Everyone must have the same mediocre experience! So that you will all bow under the Game Designer's genius! You will obey us! Unlimited rice pudding! Exterminate! Exterminate!

You gang of motherfucking fascists.

The goal was very clearly (and haplessly) expressed by Storygames Swine TonyLB on theRPGsite recently: The plan is that the game will drive away the good GMs, and bring in a new generation of young GMs that will be trained from the start to accept being neutered by the Game Designers, so they will never develop the "bad habits" of believing that they can overrule the players or the rules or, especially, so that they won't ever think that they can take an RPG and make it their own. These youngsters will, theoretically, be trained from the start to understand that RPGs are whatever the Game Designer wants them to be, and must stick to their system as written.

I guess the theory is that if D&D is made into the "gamist game" that the GNS Forge crowd always claimed it was, and people can be trained to enjoy it, then they will open up to buying other Forge-based games, and the sales of said games might actually beat the double-digits.

The real problem with this, the best laid plans of mice and men and the mediocrity-pushing fascists out there, is that I don't see anyone just bending over and enjoying it. The kids won't. Why the fuck would they? What self-respecting 14 year old will take up the job of being a GM when its like being the banker in Monopoly with the added unfun of not actually getting to be a player too (at least in monopoly, the banker actually gets to play)?

No. The 14 year old will rebel, and will demand the authority of a GM. This will only create strife in gaming groups, especially gaming groups of young players.

Hopefully, there will also be enough of the old crowd around to infect all those young minds with random charts and tables, with ideas about GMs being able to run games with authority, and to create worlds that make sense as worlds, not just as backdrops for a game where only system and game balance matter.

In the end, D&D 4e as written will suck ass to just about everybody apart from the character-build-obsessives, the Game Designers themselves, and the Swine who despise D&D (and of course, the latter won't actually play D&D, they'll just be very pleased that D&D is finally like they always tried to pretend it was). But when a game of this magnitude sucks, people will end up taking it and making it into something that is their own: with house rules, and underground rules, and unlicensed products, and rebel movements of all kinds. People will find ways to play it in a way totally different than the fascist Game Designers intended; they will make it theirs.

And in time, the corporate overlords who govern over the fascist Game Designers will be forced to change the game to fit what people actually want, and throw these asshole game designers out on their asses. Because they'll realize, sooner or later (I'm betting on relatively sooner) that they're not making the money they could be making on the game, and its the Game Designer's fault (theirs, and the Swine ideologies which pushed them to it). God bless capitalism.

RPGPundit

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4e: Making D&D Safe for Apsergers-Retards
or "Does Rolling for Random Gem Type Ruin "THE PLAN""?

I think it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that 4e is not working out for me as far as the previews are concerned. At this point I can probably safely say that unless they've been misleading us at every turn and the game is utterly different than they led on, there's practically no chance I'll enjoy the game.

But beyond that, I think that in many areas there's no question they are making MISTAKES with the rules. They're making choices that appeal to the nerds, the hardcore power-builders, and the GNS-types that want to imagine D&D is a "Gamist" game. And no where is this more evident to me than in the near-total apparent absence of random tables.

I'm the type of gamer that loves random tables. The more that you find in a game, the better the chance that game will be liked. Random results create an upredictability that lead to good emulation, when guided by the GM's judgment calls. My own upcoming FtA!GN! book is going to be chalk-full of random tables.

Random tables were a hallmark of every previous D&D edition. Even 3e, which did move away from randomization, had random tables pretty well all over the place. The position in 3.x appeared to be that the authors preferred that people used fixed values for things, so that their precious CR and "balance" weren't disrupted, but the tables were there for those who chose it. In 4e, on the other hand, it seems that all such choice has been lost in the Authors' zeal to believe that THEIR WAY is the "right" way, and their way should be imposed on the players.

In 4e, any and all randomization is seen as The Enemy. You don't even have random rolls for hit points. Are there even random rolls for attributes anymore? Is anything random?! Or can nothing be permitted to interfere with the precious "Game Balance"?

Look at what they've done now with treasure. Before, rolling random treasure results was one of the most entertaining elements of the D&D game; at least in my opinion. I'm sure that there were people who may never have used random tables. But I'm willing to bet they were far less than those who did.

Now, that too has to be scrapped: treasure must be assigned in neat little pre-determined "parcels" that will always be basically the same, because to alter them would alter "GAME BALANCE". It doesn't matter what you're fighting, you'll get what treasure you're meant to get anyways, because that's what the carefully tuned March Into Progress that is the new D&D game demands: it has planned everything out for you ahead of time. There can be no surprises to deviate from The Plan.

I mean shit, I don't get why they don't just get rid of dice rolls altogether? They're far too unpredictable. They might result in something that does not fit with the concept of Game Balance, like a PC dying or something. That must be avoided because then you wouldn't get the parcel of 550 gp, or two 250 gp art objects + 50 gp, or one 500 gp gem + 50 gp that you need to get in order to march lock-step into level 6.

And you know, until now people have been saying: "you know, all these Encounters and Skill Encounters and other sorts of things, they're set up for the beginner, you won't be FORCED to use them, you can just ignore them". Some of my pro-4e friends have been trying to claim that at every turn. Only, sorry, as of now I don't see that. Because for example, to do that with treasure would require that there be an alternative. And as far as I know, there isn't. You're going to get those "treasure parcel" tables in the DMG, but you aren't going to also get random treasure tables, are you?
So you're pretty much limited to either doing things their way, or just winging it altogether.

No random treasure tables, no random monster tables, no random dungeon tables, no random traps, no random hit dice, no random spells, no random anything.

Like Jrients said in response to this: "Just reading the description of it feels like a collar round my neck, stifling my breathing."

This isn't D&D. Its risk-less, surprise-less, utterly pre-fab busywork that sucks all the life and marrow out of the idea of adventure. And that's why its a Mistake. Apart from some nerds who are bored of it, and D&D-haters who never liked it, random tables are a feature, not a bug. They're something that makes the game more exciting for all concerned. Get rid of randomness, and you get a game that becomes predictable; and thus less playable to all but those few aspergers-retards who start to scream uncontrollably when they are confronted with something they can't predict, and just want a pseudo-game where everything is mapped out for you from the moment you start.

RPGPundit

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How the D&D "hip" Aesthetic is Missing the Boat

With 3e, between the system and the overall artistic style inferred by the book's art, it made it very hard to imagine that traditional fantasy "look", the LoTR or even the 1e/2e Forgotten Realms look.

Its like, you can't really imagine with 3e a bar scene where you have a ranger in rusty chain mail, his scimitar leaning by his chair, smoking a clay churchwarden pipe sitting across from a gandalf-esque long-bearded wizard, getting ready to go on expedition to the orcish mines.

You'd have trouble imagining that because the "ranger" would in fact be a Ranger2/Thief3/Fighter3/Prestige Master3/Pipedude 2/Acrobat1/circus clown1/sportsman1; and the Wizard would actually be a Wizard4/sorceror3/thief1/barbarian1/shadow dancer3/Jedi2/pharmacist1.
You'd have trouble imagining it because the Ranger wouldn't be in rusty chain mail, he'd be in some kind of gold-green coloured spiky bulby armour and have a giant flametongue +4 runesword with Dragonmarks ™. And of course he wouldn't be smoking a pipe, that's politically incorrect.

You'd have trouble imagining it because the Wizard would in fact be a short half-tiefling chick in a revealing leather bikini (along with a bunch of buckles and straps in places where they're not really needed for anything) covered in tattoos with purple eyes and spiky green hair.

And of course, they wouldn't be going to the Orcish mines; they'd be going to the Dire Gargantuan Orcs who have the half-draconic AND the half-celestial AND the half-infernal templates (that's right, that's 200% of orcs per orc: each orc is one-quarter dragon, one-quarter angel, one-quarter demon and one-quarter orc).

And they probably wouldn't be in mines either, they'd be in motherfucking Mario's Palace.

Does anyone really believe that 4e will be any better at capturing the more classic fantasy feel?
Is it not the height of retarded that, given the massive success of traditional fantasy in recent years (LoTR, the upcoming hobbit movie, narnia, all the blockbuster fantasy movies, not ONE of which has featured dungeonpunk or WoW-esque styles), the people at Wizards would be doing everything they possibly can to try to make D&D as un-mainstream-fantasy as possible?

I mean shit, its like these guys are a bunch of 30something idiots who're utterly clueless about current trends and actually feel embarrassed about D&D's traditional look, and are trying everything they can (ending up in predictable utter overkill) to try to make D&D "hip" for "the kids", without having a fucking clue that what the kids are hip to these days IS traditional fantasy.

RPGPundit

Some of my friends were able to get there hands on PDFs of the 4th edition D&D rulebooks. I was excited to get a chance to play it, if only because the product has not yet been officially released yet.

As the topic description states 4th ed. is awful. It can be summed up in a series of three points:

1) Everyone is a variant of the 3rd edition Warlock.

2) There is no fluff anymore.

3) It is WoW.

I blame Keith Baker, one of the chief designers and the creater of the terrible Eberon campaign setting. Everything he comes up with is stupid and 4th ed is no exception. My question is why WOTC put the designer of a campaign setting that has not been selling well in charge of creating their new rules set?

I also want the rules not to get in the way of the story, I doubt that happend but 99% of the stuff I've seen they finally moved out of 1980s RPGs.

I'm actually a fan of the multi-classing.. If only because it allowed me to get a character that was more unique and had the abilities and combinations to make what I wanted. (It's also why I like shadowrun, which doesn't have classes.. or levels.)

I blame Keith Baker, one of the chief designers and the creater of the terrible Eberon campaign setting. Everything he comes up with is stupid and 4th ed is no exception. My question is why WOTC put the designer of a campaign setting that has not been selling well in charge of creating their new rules set?

Also, LOL at how this thread with its little negative tagline is much longer than the "positive" thread, http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=22362

I
Eberron: The only D&D setting I actually like.

Personally, when I need a my fix of a game using a 20-sided die, I would rather play Spycraft 2.0 (imagine d20 Modern done RIGHT) or True20 (by Green Ronnin).

Just my 2 nuyen ... uh ... copper pieces.