(Title is a mockery of Harry Potter)
This is a mild Pitting, a pre-pitting if you will. It’s going off the leaked information from Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. It’s very long because it takes some time to build, K?
I am not happy. I admit, 3rd edition was never my favorite. Or favoriteS is you count 3.5 in , too. The basic rules as such weren’t bad, but they rarely considered the impact of their easy acces to xp and magic. It was just way toot easy to level up; xp was much too easy to come by. Treasure too. Heck, this is the world where a pitiful peasant hovel cost something like 2000 gold coins. Which were originally something on the order of 600$+ peices individually! (Now THAT’S some inflation. Boy did I get a shock when I first tried to buy my character a house!)
Many of the expansion books were ludicrously bad. The Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook continued in the aforementioned vein till the a reasonably-sized mansion with a few adventurer-extras could run you a dozen dragon-hoards. They kept putting out immense numbers of prestige classes, thousands of them in the official material alone. And several dozen basic classes. And feats by the tens of thousands. Much of it was derivative of their own material (three different whip-using pain-causing PrC’s for the Church of Loviatar, who was a minor Goddess anyway?!). Most of it was just not fun.
In addition, they were never certain what they wanted, world-wise. They seemed to prefer completely character-less worlds with nothing going on in the background and no active agents outside the player characters. They failed to put out almost anything for Greyhawk, or reprint the old. Forgotten Realms got a better treatment, but most of their materialfor it was ridiculously bad. They tended to spend five pages describing the stuff you could do, what was going on, and whom you could fight/mess with/ally with - and 50 describing lame Prestige Classes no one wanted. They eventually came out with Eberron, which was supposed ot be teh diffrint!!!11111 but honestly, outside of a new art style and direction, there wasn’t much functionally seperating it. No new ideas, not much mechanically, not even a very distinct world background outside of a few ‘extras’, all of which I’ve seen done better in third-party products. Between my circle of friends alone, and not mentioning people I know casually, I’ve seen at least 5 submissions to their contest I would rate far better than Eberron, several of which I went out and played!
But I will say one thing. Despite themselves, they didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. DnD 3/3.5 was trying to make a classic but flawed system better and bringing it up to modern spec. And they did succeed in making it better and fixing the flaws; they added in flaws in other ways, and much fo that seems to come from the Marketing Department. (Hint: If the Marketing Department wants to sell 50 bazillion splatbooks, let them write it!)
Probably the biggest flaw is that they attempted to computer-game it. The rules were apparently intended to be easily transplantable to PC code. Ths entailed a lot fo simplification. They totally failed, and ironically every 3/3.5 computer game wound up doing a huge amount more kludges and hacks than the old 2nd edition ones, with the possible exception of Neverwinter Nights 2. IMHO, the old system offered a better gameplay experience simply because it cleaner, less worried about finding the best race/class/gear combinations, and more interested in going out and getting through the amazing battles, but I recognize this may be due to the fact that BG1, BG2, and Icewind Dale were all great games.
BUT (we’re getting to the point here)
DnD 4 seems to be trying to reinvent the wheel, and not doing a very good job of it. Leaked information seems to indicate they’re moving far away from the old forms of character and such.
Now, most characters will have a set of abilities they use “per encounter.” These will mostly be weird random one-shot effects, attacks, innate spells, and things.
Now, there are odd problems with this.
Having “1 per encounter” or “1 per day” abilities, which I was never a fan of, either, it tends to make the game feel like, well, a simulation. It always left me feeling cold, adhereing to arbitrary rules than playing an danger-crossing adventurer in search of wealth and glory. I was fine with most games which said you have so many magical resources per day or per rest or per refill and distribute them as you please. I am fine with the Vancian Magic appproach, even. But 1/day? 1/encounter? Who the bloody heck writes these laws of nature? It just feels like a legal code when it should feel like an adventure.
But moreover, what defines “an encounter”? I’ve been mulling this over in my mind, and it just seems awful kludgey. Hey, we defeated those bad guys and ten seconds later we ran into these bad guys. Ha, that’s OK, I’ve got my killer abilities back! The encounter shifted, right!
Yech.
It gets worse. It assumes that all the party is in the same encounter. Let’s say that the party gets buffed from some spell. One guy goes to sleep. Another gets in a fight. One’s conducting a merchant deal. Does the guy bargaining have his buff last for several hours? Does the guy fighting have his run out when he changes from talking to fighting? It only makes sense in terms of “it’s all a game here” and that just breaks my suspension of disbelief.
On top of that, the skill system is being simplified so that all your class skils are always 5+level+d20 roll. Cross class is level+d20 roll. Ah, well… that’s simple, I guess. But it takes out the actually thinking ever required. I mean, your skills are exactly like everyone else’s skills! All Fighters can do exactly the same things. All Rogues can do exactly the same things.
Yech.
Lastly, spellcasters.
They’re planning to change them up. It’s not clear whether they’re going to a spell-point system just give them several spells per encounter or what. If the former, well, that’s never been popular in games, because it makes it seem like a computer game. I don’t mind characters having so many resources per day, but the pool of points always felt Diablo-ish to me. But it’s at least tolerable, so I won’t knock it. If they do it, however, it would bother me that they’re just tossing the big neat thing that DnD always had - wizards and clerics have to plan ahead and think about what they will need.
The other possibility is that they’re going for use-per encounter abilities. Sorcerers now make pacts with magical beings. Again, I don’t mind the idea intrinsically, but the bloody Sorcerer isn’t one edition old and they want to completely change it up? make up your friggin minds! Apart from that, I haven’t heard much about magic.
Finally, though, I need to mention Forgotten Realms. I rarely played it, but I had a soft spot in my heart for the old gal. It had an age and a history to it. It was lived-in and the people there acted like they were in a bloody fantasy world. They used magic for things, had whole kingdoms which revered wizardry, and had titanic batles between gods, men, and monsters.
BOOM
Well, it’s all gone now. Civilization is basically extinguished. The Goddess of Magic dies… again… and all the high-level characters keeled over and died.
Played a big campaign in Forgotten Realms? Well, it doesn’t matter now. There’s no Thay, no Rasheman, no Waterdeept, no Amn, no Baldur’s Gate. Cities are gone, and you’re just trying to survive. Yay.
And all the gods died. They’ve been cut down from 150 to 30. Heck, the multiplicity of specialized gods was one of the most classic things about FR! It matched up to real-world greco-Roman ideas. But gone. And apparently all the people who lived in those gods’ domains are all gone, too. But mostly, they’re taking out gods so as to match up better with the ones they have in the player’s handbook. :rolleyes: .
I’ll grant the idea of the Wall of Souls was pathetic, as it basically meant the gods needed to blackmail people into worshipping them. But still, even with that, who’se gong to worhsip the gods now? They’ve basically been shown to be useless, who can’t even give you an afterlife! heck the gods in FR don’t even have a very long life expectency themselves. They get blown away faster than a gobbler at a Turkey Shoot.
Y’know, there’s a place for post-apocalytic games. I’m not a huge fan of the genre as a whole, but I loved Deadlands HoE. But doing this basically ruins Forgotten Realms. I mean, consider the poeple who like FR. They’re going to like the various nations, the cultures, the epic battles between gods and men and monsters, between good and evil. I dont’ think there’s much continuity with the people who like the post-apocalytic games. And the comments I hear back this up. People go “they’re ruining my FR, bastards!”. And poeple go, 'I’ve never played FR and have no intention of doing so, but it sounds like a neat thing to do to an established world." And that’s just it - they don’t overlap much. If they want a post-apocalyptic setting, why not try and make one to spec rather than shitting on one of their very, very few actual settings?
But more to the point, it takes out what was most of the point of FR in the first place, which is the epic battle between good and evil. If everyone’s just trying to survive and no one has any resources, you don’t care why anyone’s doing anything and it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no reason to care if someone wants to open up the gates of the Nine Hells and conquer the world. it doesn’t mean anything. If the monsters come down out fo the hills, you have no reason to care unless they bother you. When villages are vanishing right and left, there’s no point in fighting desperately to save this one when it’s going to get squished the moment you turn your back.
I mean, virtually every urban area on the planet is wiped out. Something like 99.9+% of the population is simply gone. Cities are nothing more than a monster-infested ruin for adventurers to loot. Good and evil just kinda lose their meaning. I mean, you can do sombody a favor and be nice but what difference will it make? The apocalypse is now and there’s pretty mch no hope for the afterlife and if your fucking god is even still around would you even worship the cock-sucking loser?
Takes a deep breath
And as far as applying the 4th edition rules goes, what the fuck happens with all natural law because the this is the thirdt time they’ve altered the laws of reality in the world and the second time in like 20 in-game years where the entire cosmos got shifted andif the friggin laws o nature get changed everyt ime we fucking turn around, then trying to actually do anything productive has no meaning because it will be totally different next week when, like last time the fucking characters will be rewritten just as they were after the Time or Troubles 3rd edition rules showed up and when 3.5 happened because we fucking canon listed in books where characters used powers in ways where they couldn’t earlier or where they couldn’t do something they did in the last gorram book and let’s not forget characters being rewritten entirely so that they were abruptly revealed to be sorcerers the entire time but no one mentioned this and now comploetely out of the blue Warlocks show up and they were there all along or something but no one fucking noticed and now we’ve got a completely different laws of magic and shit and why hell don’t we just pack it in anyway because it’s evident that the universe is just screwing with us?
Phew
Finally, it’s a giant Fuck You! to all the people who do play in Forgotten realms. It basically says that nothing you ever did mattered. Yes, you can still play your own world and things but I still view it as a huge insult. I mean, it more or less says that everything anyone’s ever done in the world was totally meaningless. You held off the evil wizards? Oh well. Everything’s the same. You defeated the evil dragon? He’s probably just as dead as he would otherwise have been and his victims all died anyway. And you can argue that it’s realistic but it isn’t any fucking fun.
And it’s not like they’re hurting for possible settings. They just ignore them. Do you see any Mystara, Birthright, or Planscape stuff being made? Why the hell not? Even if they dont’ want to support it all massively with a dozen bokos each, youd think that a few well-developed single-setting books would sell. Everyone could buy whatever they wanted and they could each incorporate different themes. In any given group probably everyone would own one book or something and you’d get really good market penetration. The best selling ones could be supported more.
Plus, there’s the little problem of none of it making damn sense. Lord AO is the overgod and is specifically intended to stop these kinda of disasters from hapenning. Moreover, he can just stop them anytime he pleases. Even the the Tablets of Fate were stolen (Time of Troubles) it meant nothing and he caused the smacked down every God in Faerun simultaneously. He almost certainly knew exactly what happened to the Tablets and allowed it because the theft wasn’t a particularly problem. The Tablets didn’t do anything or have any power - AO did. He allowed it all just to teach them a lesson. Only now even though the gods are on the straight and narrow of actually doing their jobs, they’ve all been blown to shit randomly.
Plus, it really doesn’t make much sense for Cyric to actually do this, assuming he even could. Supposedly he uses some ritual to kill Mystra and release her power. Or some shit. But this isn’t rational (leaving out the schizophrenic characterization of Cyric becase the writers are too dumbass to think about what they’re vomiting). Magic only works because Mystra says it does, and the last time anbybody tried this is turned into a huge disaster because the fucking spell only works halfway before it gets turned off and Cyric would know that. This leaves to the entire Shadowweave bullshit because if any god can just do the same thing then being god of magic makes no fucking difference. You might as well be the fucking god of fluffy bunnies and make your own fluffy-bunny weave.
Finally, there was never any logic behind Cyric hating Mystra anyway. Outisde of the fact that she was the ultimate Mary Sue fanwank every and dressed like a chubby German hooker on smack, she was never his enemy. And this leaves out the entire cock-faggoting idiocy which occurred when they decided to make him randomly evil. I mean, OK, he was ambitious and wanted to be a god, but he didn’t have any reason to randomly go evil. I mean, in the first Time of troubles book, he honestly went out and did some pretty heroic things, which even if he had a grudge against the Zhents, really to a hero to do. He defended good people without thought of reward against some really evil people doing really bad things. In the second book, he stil di9dn’t do anything particularly evil, going out of his way to kill an evil god. OK, he wanted to be a god. So what? He’s an adventurer. In the third, he grabs the Tablets of Fate and takes them to AO. OK, for no reason he did so in a petty and selfish manner when he could easily have helped kill the final evil god and it’s not like he had any idea of what AO wanted. So he’s jsut randomly evil, and in the bokos that follow he’s insanely ridiculously monstrous, like The Joker’s lovechild by Satan’s mother-in-law. And that’s just the point - it was totally out of the fucking blue makes no sense I have no fucking plot but need to sell some books STUPID!
…
Anyway, this was mostly pretty mild but I wanted to get it off my xchest. I hope I am wrong about things but I’ve never been too appreciative of Wizards’ ability to write RPG’s. They seem to want to do everything like Magic the Gathering but they do it badly. Magic has solid but flexible rules. They’re not afraid to mess with their world but they don’t just wreck it again and again, and when they do it’s not like the whole thing just got annihlated and all previous events made moot. And frankly, the characterizations make sense. Sure, Crovax seemingly became a random villain but that was due to a treacherous angel and a REALLY nasty curse. It makes sense in the context of the story and doesn’t mess with the game. While wars take place, people survive and even thrive in their wake.
Meanwhile, worlds like Ravnica do some pretty cool things. They use the basic mechanic but aren’t afraid to pare things down carefully as well as expand. There’s no exploding everything they’ve done previously. When they wanted to try something new, they added something new. Ravnica borrowed a setting they hadn’t tried before, created mechanics they hadn’t tried before, and incorporated Eastern European themes. Frankly, that one expansion had more in its own way than all their DnD crap ever did in all the expansions they added.
What honestly freaks me out is that the DnD creators seriously afraid of doing anything which is actually new, or even anything which hasn’t been done in a while - but when they actually do, they can’t stop themselves and have stomp all over the whole reason why anyone bought the damned thing in the first place. It’s like they have no sense of proporation and no understanding of whom their market is. It’s true that with heavy discounting and big advertising they got huge intial sales of DnD. The problem wa they dind’t really do much after that and their sales crsashed. They kinda kept things afloat by havig a big revision (which pissed me off to no end) and offering dozens of shitty splatbooks, but the fact which they don’t understand is that the game industry isn’t a huge one and won’t be for the foreseeable future. You’re not going to get giant sales off of the books and unlike Magic they’re not going to rush out and buy a copy of everything you make. They managed to cannibilize the market for a while but it wound up severely depressing their sales in the long run, and you can’t run a bsiness of that.
