As I mentioned when I proposed this theme week about endings, I can’t stay away from D&D 4e until June. I’ve enough of a ‘business’ sense that Love it or Hate it, the 4th edition of D&D is on the minds of a lot of people and writing about it is going to garner interest.
Since I’m currently battling the specters of the White Page Syndrome, I decided to tackle this Mofo head on by writing about a new subject!
So I’ll post a series of short texts where I tackle 2 short subjects on 4e from a DM’s perspective and ask for your thoughts.
Since the D&D experience weeks ago, a lot has been said about it on various sites. Since then I’ve had time to form my own opinions (not always easy when the Hype machine rages strongly) on some things that seem promising and some that leave me a bit uneasy about the new edition of the game.
In a nut shell, D&D 4e IS NOT going to be about Nostalgia and IS going to be about the Rule of Fun/Rule of Cool.
Kicking Nostalgia to the Curb
One of the design philosophy of D&D 4e is ‘We don’t have to keep something in the game just because it’s always been there’… to which I’ll add ‘… at least not in the three Core books’
Things are going to be taken away from the game such as Alloy Dragons, the 9-point alignment system, Save or Dies, Level drains, some Core classes and the Great-Wheel Cosmology.
While what the designers and developers propose to replace these things with are promising and probably cool/fun, I can’t deny that I have a twinge of regret for some of the aspects of the game they are taking away.
This goes deeper than Change Resistance. There are things about D&D, even the bad ones, that we grew attached to. I think it’s bad form for 4e proponents to try to sweep these changes away without at least allowing a moment to acknowledge that these things had a sentimental and/or irrational value to us long time players. I believe this is one of the things that fuel some of the debates I see on the boards.
(Yeah I took some Change Management courses…)
People are weird. Some liked that Bards were horrible in combat, others prefer Dragons to be color coded for evilness. When I read on Jeff’s Gameblog about the blast he has playing Original D&D, I realize that there are people around here for whom taking away some of these legacy systems (like level draining) literally takes away the interest they had in the game itself.
It’s a given, much like 3e, D&D 4e is going to be a totally different game from previous editions.
So here I say it. Let’s take a few seconds to acknowledge that we are going to miss some of the stuff they are taking away from 4e … Much like a freed kidnapped victim after the Stockholm Syndrome sets in.
That won’t make 4e a bad game and this is not a dis on a game I’ve yet to read. But I’ve seen few people come out and say what I feel many of us feel in various degrees.
There I feel better to have been listened to… thanks! 
It’s all about Fun and Games
What D&D 4e is going to be about is having fun with the mechanics and allowing to do Cool stuff easily in combat and with skills.
D&D is going to be about, among many things, making monster simpler to run, with at least 1 key cool ability each.
It’s going to be about faster paced fights with an emphasis on moving our miniatures around the board, jumping on tables, striking at opponent’s Armor, Reflexes, Will or Fortitude directly (a brilliant progression from 3e d20 core mechanic).
It’s going to be about powers, options, and giving all PCs with something significant to do all the time in combat.
D&D continues it’s progression from a Fantasy Role Playing game to a Fantasy Action Role Playing game started in 3e. One of the core design philosophies seems to be ‘you saw that in a movie, sure you can do it in the game too’.
Now to those that will decry that D&D 4e is only going to be about combat… let’s be honest here… the mechanics of all D&D games have always been about conflict. For example, with a few exceptions, spells are written with combat application in mind (making them often too constrained to be used in non-combat situations).
I said it before and I’ll say it here again, you don’t actually need mechanics to roleplay. My 4 year old daughter grasps the concept of ‘narrative’ and ’story’ very well.
By making sure that every core class as a significant role in combat, it seems to me that the designers are only making sure that everyone that wants to have fun in combat can. Those that never cared about it will just do as they always did and wait it out, rolling d20 whenever their turn comes up.
At least I believe that all classes will be equally useful in Combat at the game’s launch. I have a feeling we’ll see sub-par designs in future source books from designers who didn’t ‘get’ that philosophy or are against it.
Plus, if I understand this correctly, XPs are now going to be given on a Scene-based basis, so Story awards will definitively be in.
So there you have it. Some of us lose some of the bits we grew attached to. Some of those bits will be released in later supplements (and I’m going to do a whole post about the planned marketing strategy of 4e), but some are gone for good.
The game will be about action, coolness and fun (as defined by the WotC R&D team) for the players. Such concepts are not for everyone, and I predict that the Indy scene (the Forge games community for example) will probably decry D&D’s move into more populist, MMORPG-friendly territory.
What say you? (Please note that I know that this is a touchy subject, we’ve managed to avoid flame wars on this blog so far, so let’s talk on the basis that we agree to disagree… but I want to see your heartfelt argument pro and con from what you’ve seen of the game so far).
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Write a Comment»I’m all for cool and fun. Can’t really say more till I get to play it in full.
I (and I would guess that a significant amount of Forge people) think the development is positive: D&D becomes even better at the thing it is good at, which is high fantasy combats.
There is no doubt that Mike Mearls’ influence on 4e is present. You can see some of his early attempts at making combat more fluid and exciting in Iron Heroes.
That said, I am looking forward to 4e. I loved 3e when it came out, and fully enjoyed playing it, but after nearly 8 years, I am looking forward to an evolution in mechanics. Part of RPG’s that I enjoy, is the mechanical model of a game. d20, when it came out, was a great mechanic, and I fully enjoyed playing it. It lead to some other great offshoots, like True 20. But now, 8 years later, I am looking to learn again, looking for new rules that move the game froward. I think that 4e has a lot of that.
I am actually happy that they are dumping, some of the things I hated most about older versions: the 9-point alignment system, Save or Dies, Level drains, and the Great-Wheel Cosmology. In almost all my campaigns I either houseruled or dropped most of these. So for me 4e is going in the right direction.
My only regret for 4e right now, is that the Half-Orc is not one of the original races. My first 3e character was a Half-Orc barbarian, and I am rather fond of him. To not be able to convert him to 4e, initially, is a bit of a downer.
All in all, I am looking forward to 4e, and looking forward to some great combats.
Now that we’re seeing how the mechanics are going to hang together in 4e, I’m very excited by it. Very excited indeed
D&D carries a lot of baggage, especially when it comes to the Alignment system and Vancian magic. The decisions they made for 3rd Edition to keep them in was the right one at the time; I think making the changes then would have been too much, too soon. Now though, in the post WoW age, 4e needs to hit the MMORPG market head on to attract new players. I reckon that most existing 3.5e gamers will just on board too because, as they say, they’ve made the game “more fun”.
Besides, if I want old-school D&D my veritable Rules Cyclopedia still gets an airing now and then
When it comes to role-playing, I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that D&D //isn’t// a role-playing game. Shocking, I know. D&D is a combat engine - and a pretty good one at that - that you can use to role-play if you want, but there’s little or no actual mechanics in place to control the role-playing. It’s like kids playing hide-and-seek. Some will hide, while others will pretend to be cowboys on a stake-out. Both are playing the same game, by the same rules, but one is role-playing. D&D’s rules are the same as the rules for hide-and-seek, merely more complex.
In contrast, a game such as GURPS //is// a role-playing game; the characters you generate have fully stated out personalities, likes and dislikes that help the player understand and play the social interraction aspect of the game. Compare any D&D character sheet with a GURPS one for proof. The D&D sheet will tell you how kewl your 15th level Fighter is in combat, but say nothing about his personality. Two players would play the character completely differently. A GURPS sheet, on the other hand, would tell you that the character is allergic to cats, intimidated by authority and still had nightmares about an incident from childhood.
That’s not to say one is necessarily better than the other, of course. Just different.
I’m pretty much of your position DnaPhil.
One thing I have read about that I like about 4th edition is the commitment of the team to clearly state what book you need as a player while making sure they are complete in and out of themselves.
This in turn gives us the impression that we will need more books in order to play, like a second PHB for these extra races and classes that we want. The thing is though, that in the 3rd edition you needed the monster manual for your summon spell and you needed the DMG for you magical equipment, which was annoying.
I can’t wait for the new edition to come out but I prefer to have a properly flesh out races and classes then flaky one. So Wotc, take your time and make it good. We don’t want a 4.5 but we’ll probably have the same discussion in 10 years when 5th comes out.
Okay… I will definitely miss certain things about 3e, though probably less than most. And I can understand people having attachments to certain mechanics that will be gone…
But Save or Die? Level Drain? Seriously? Who is missing those?
/confused
‘you say that in a movie, sure you can do it in the game too’
but if you saw it on Voyager…
Plus, if I understand this correctly, XPs are now going to be given on a Scene-based basis, so Story awards will definitively be in.
Not really, from what I can tell. Each creature will have its own XP value, for combat. There will be full guidelines for adjudicating non-combat XP as well. But from what I can tell, none of it is based on “scenes” as much as it’s based on “encounters”, where an encounter need not be combative.
DNAphil - The Orc, at the very least, will be in the 4e MM, and will include rules for using the Orc race. I don’t know if Half-Orc will be, but at the very least he could be rewritten as an Orc Fighter.
Greywulf, you post your comment at the same time I was writing mine, but you got a good point.
It was my main argument against D&D in the time but in the end, I let it slide and not having the disadvantage on my sheet does not prevent me from role playing it anyway.
Yes it’s not enforced, but as a GM do we really want to make the police and say: “Penality for bad roleplaying! Two minutes on the bench…” Well maybe the sport fan but i digress.
The point is a rule system’s crunch does not need to support actively the role playing part he just need to leave breathing space to let us tag the role playing aspect on it.
greywulf - strangely, this is why I’ve always preferred D&D for roleplaying. Two people can pick up the same character and play his completely differently, with no prior constraints placed upon them by the system itself.
Yan - “We don’t want a 4.5″
Trust me. Neither do the designers/developers.
Yan, I agree entirely
Nothing in D&D stops you from role-playing, at all - just like nothing in hide-and-seek stops you either. D&D takes the tack of not providing rules how to role-play, and that’s good. GURPS (and other systems) do provide rules, and that’s good too.
As you say, we wouldn’t want the role-playing police to come round, would we
I’m pretty sure we can all recognise (and reward) good role-playing when we see it too.
Back to 4e, I’d love to see an example of multi-classing right about now………
“The point is a rule system’s crunch does not need to support actively the role playing part he just need to leave breathing space to let us tag the role playing aspect on it.”
I’m in full agreement with you there Yan. That has always been my one big beef with 3.0/3.5. It never seemed to leave room for stuff aside from combat. Reading the section on xp for things other than combat in the DMG was like hearing an afterthought shouted from across a football field. I don’t really need them to cater to my style of play, but leaving options open for me to make it happen can keep me interested in it as a gaming choice. I really like that they seem to be widening their perspective a bit with 4e. Dnd will always be about combat (heck gamers like to engage in combat in games, that is the way it is for most things), but they seem to be doing a lot of good stuff that allows more than combat. I was brought back into the 3.5 fold because of Eberron, but 4e will probably keep me interested if the reports are accurate.
Ahhhh comments are coming in faster than I can read them!
All good points. I’ll address Graham’s comment…
Okay, my examples were probably ill chosen but you got my point.
I remember a recent post on Jeff’s Gameblog that says that for his crew D&D was about stupid Dungeon Crawls, Attributes giving no bonuses and players getting killed without Saving throws…
Somehow, as unfun as this now sounds to my ear, I clearly remember having fun when playing such games (hence the Nostalgia)… Level draining, made an encouter with a Wight a Freaking scary one…. back then.
I’ll come back later to discuss this further!
I think a new edition is cool. Personally, I have only played 3rd edition for a single year, however. Having bought tons of material, I feel that 3rd edition can’t be all that bad if you have all been playing it for the last eight years, so I’ll try and stick to 3.5 just to get some return on my investment.
That’s the kind of miser I am…
Alex… I’ll probably put all my 3.5 books up for Donation to the Charity of Broke Gamers come Summer.
Provided someone foots the shipping bill!
I should auction it off and give the money to Child’s Play
What I have seen of the new version, does have Mearls’ influence all over it, and that is mostly good in by opinion. My main concern, is with the upcoming OGL revision, that is concurrent with the upcoming new SRD. I don’t own the books - and I won’t buy the new ones - I would however, like to be able to incorporate new mechanics, rules, powers, and so forth, in a way that is backward compatible. That is the beauty of the current system, the core of D&D, as we are all familiar with it, is in there. Revisions and new mechanics should be modular and additive, not wholly incompatible with what has come before.
ELG - this isn’t a revision, however. 4e is a complete rewrite.
While you could take some mechanics back to 3e, most will be incompatible without significant work. This is the same situation as the shift from 2e to 3e was. Some things are similar, but much of even the underlying mechanic has changed.
Two issues/Points:
)
1. In terms of the role playing vs combat discussion, I have heard that they are fleshing out role playing “encounters” more in 4th edition. Something more complete than just the whole diplomacy/bluff/sense motive/intimidate thing. And if I remember correctly, xp reward guidelines are included for such encounters. Dave Noonan covered this in a very general sense in his blog and the D&D podcast.
(Both are great, BTW
2. I’m surprised there isn’t more commenting on the alignment change and the related Great Wheel change. I’ve always thought the 9 alignments were a stroke of genius and they’ve been a major component of the game for a long time. I’ll be interested to see what the alternative is in 4E.
I’ll miss the Great Wheel planes mechanic, but I can see why it is going away. I’ve always thought planar adventuring was problematic at best (for reasons that I won’t go into here). But I like the idea of simplifying the planes and giving each more unique personalities.
I, for one, always hate the alignment and won’t miss it one bit…
The thing is, I love the shade of grey character (Be it PC or NPC) when you can just ping someone to determine if he’s “good or evil” it goes against building intricate personality…
It did enable some interesting mechanics (Align weapon/spell/creature) but I did not like fascist underlying current that it encourage in game.
I just started gaming again 6 months ago after being out of the loop since 1st ed. While I’ve had a wonderful time, I get more and more annoyed at all the fussy little details of 3.5. Like greywulf says, it’s a combat system, and I’m always impatient to get done with the combat and do some roleplaying. Anything that makes the combat smoother and easier, with less of everyone having to dig into books to figure out how to make their character do something will get three cheers from me, and I’m hoping 4e will do that.
The only similarity I am seeing between 3.4 and 4E is the name “D&D”. The changes are too radical. Seemingly made to market the game to a demographic that I as a long time gamer (since 1978) no longer belong too. I see no reason the hobby needs a new edition. 3.5 may have a few issues but not enough to justify a complete reboot. I don’t want marketers running my favorite hobby.
Not to mention I am not buying all of my 3.5 books AGAIN. I have to much time and money tied up in 3.5.
After thirty years of being a loyal customer, I and D&D will be parting ways.
I already paid into two editions of the game, and I’m still getting my money’s worth out of 3e. I know the company has reason to renew interest (and their pocket books).
One solution could be to cater to the diversity of consumers by not abandoning previous editions, but publishing them simultaneously, clearly marking source books with the corresponding number. Imagine a shiny new reprint of the 2e core books, accompanied by new peripheral source books. You think no one in the old guard would be tempted to shell out a 20-spot on those? (Especially if their nigh unto 20-year-old copy has been put through the ringer?)
First up! Sorry for the Faulty Wavatars… WordPress and the Gravatar people are working at a new common upgrade which may address this issue we’re seeing here and on Shamus’ site.
Second: Thanks for all the comments. I can’t deal with them one on one as I usually try to do, but it’s clear that we sit all over the slide on that subject.
Some key things:
Tommi: I agree that with 4e, D&D fully assumes itself as an action combat game.
GreyWulf: While I see your points I disagree that Gurps is better at RPing. I know Gurps front and Back and I’d say it’s actually a Point based Char Gen System tacked on a Tactical Combat System that dates to the 80’s (I played Man to Man before it became Gurps). However, I fully agree that the whole Advantage/Disadvantage approach gave better pointers toward Role Playing that the alignment system did… if and only if you don’t have Moin Maxers like Math and Yan that made Impulsive, Overconfident, Bloodlust characters most of the time…
GreenVesper: I’m really looking forward to see the new Cosmology and will probably buy Monte’s beyonf countless Doorways to supplement it!
Mrs L., Tesuso and Brain B: Welcom to the blog! Thanks for commenting!
Mrs L. : From what I read combat will take as long but be simpler and more action driven… let’s hope it shall be like that.
Testubo: I hear ya and respect that. I too sank thousands of dollars into D&D 3e… but I love the hobby enough to start again and I got my money’s worth from most books (with a few exceptions). But hey stay tuned for Chatty’s garage sale!
BrianB: Organizations like Paizo, Open Design and other 3rd parties are ready to cater to the 3.x crowd, if and only if thay can make a living out of doing this. So the market will determine the possibility of what you are asking for.
BrianB; Nice idea, but the real world logistic involved in maintaining all of these edition would probably cost more then the monetary return they would get out of hit.
Not mentioning the inventory space required for any distributor to have it in stock.
They could though have it sold in a PDF version. Thus bypassing inventory & printing part of these issue, but that would still undermine their newest product and create brand confusion.
Hey! My character was a delusional daredevil that though he was a noble! And had none of those… :p
Oh you did? My bad
Edited my comment from ‘All the time’ to ‘most of the time…’
CDM, I didn’t say GURPS was better. Heck, I went out of my way to make the point that it’s not better, only different
IMHO, both D&D and GURPS have their merits. I don’t mind mix-maxed characters - as one of my players once said “the higher the stats, the lower the life expectancy”. Hehehe.
Edit after more thought…….
When it comes to role-playing though, GURPS actually addresses the role-playing side of things, whereas D&D doesn’t. Whether that’s better or not depends on your group and how you play, I guess. We like it for our gritty World War II campaign. After all, when you’re all playing soldiers who’ve had the same basic training, it’s the character differentiation that matters, and GURPS handles that very well indeed.
Chatty - What faulty Wavatars? Have you been drinking again?
Mrs. L - While a combat in 4e won’t necessarily be over significantly quicker, it will move faster. A long 3e combat lasts about an hour, but is maybe 5 rounds in length, while in 4e it looks like a long combat still be about an hour, but will contain 15-20 rounds. It may take the same time, but more gets done in that time, and it should rarely feel stagnant.
Rodney Thompson raises an interesting point on his blog regarding the ‘4ed D&D is a combat game’ issue. He points out that this perception is largely because the combat rules are all that have been revealed thus far. He also has an interesting quote about what hasn’t been revealed:
“I find it particularly interesting that the areas where I feel we’ve improved the game the most aren’t the ones we’re showing off. Stephen Radney-Macfarland and I had a conversation some weeks back where we both agreed that while I think 4E improves on the player’s side of D&D by this much [------], in essence building on much of the foundation laid by the excellent design behind 3E, the improvements on the DM’s side of the screen are up by this much [-------------------------]. Bad part is, that’s harder to show off in neat, pre-packaged articles.”
I have already begun incorporating some of the new power attack options in my campaign with the kids. They work great, were balanced, and the play just flowed more smoothly. This one change alone enabled more role playing and verisimilitude than before.
I have to admit, this is honestly the first time I’ve heard something _against_ the Great Wheel cosmology. I assumed they were dropping it just for the sake of change, but there are people that didn’t like it? Is it just because of the alignment association, or what?
Greywulf: Bad choice of words. I concede you never said Gurps was better. But it’s RPing strength does lie in Char Gen.
Justin: Welcome to the Blog! One of the reasons why they changed the Cosmic Wheel… according to “Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters” is that making 17 planes forced people to create 17 different areas and specific monsters for these planes… (If you read the original Planescape setting it reads as if all planes are empty except 2 or 3 different life forms except petitioners).
So now you get 9 planes (Material, Shadowfell, FeyWilde, Abyss, Elemental Chaos, Astral Sea, Hell, Mount Celestia) with clearly different features. They then reworked some legacy race to fit this… Like the Gith coming from the default Material world but from an ancient era.
I have read Planescape, yeah; it’s one of my favorite settings, in fact. And that’s why I don’t understand it, because that’s not really the case at all. I mean, the PSMC3 had a three-in-a-half page, three-column list of just the names of creatures native to the planes from 2e, and 3e’s added even more since then. If you’re just going by core, then maybe that’s the case, I’ll grant that.
That’s probably the source of most of my own reticence about 4e, I imagine. Of two of my favorite settings, one of them (Spelljammer) was already pretty well abandoned in 3e, and now they seem to be doing the same with the other. I’m still holding off, but the level of interweaving between the fluff and crunch will be a big influence in what I end up thinking about 4e. If it’s going to be especially difficult to strip out all the changes to fluff they’re making in 4e, and use the 3e-and-earlier fluff with 4e mechanics, I’m probably going to be personally leaving it aside.
re: Planes
Yeah, there are those of us that can’t stand the Great Wheel.
The alignment factor is one part, certainly. But there are more reasons besides that. For one, many of the planes were either boring or deadly (elemental, energy).
As for Spelljammer or Planescape, all the current planes still exist in 4e. They’re just arranged differently. Both of these settings would work quite well in the new Astral Sea, which contains most of the planes from 3e and prior as locations, as well as whatever other new locations you feel like adding. But every old Planescape plane is there, if you want it to be.
The biggest change in this context is that you no longer need a Plane Shift spell to travel between the locations. You can board an appropriate vessel and travel between Ysgard and the Beastlands without crossing a physical planar boundary.
Honestly, it sounds like it would make Spelljammer easier to run, not harder.
Or, of course, you could link the locations with portals and get Planescape.
The new cosmology actually consists of 5 planes, not 9. Material, Feywild, Shadowfell, Elemental Chaos, and Astral Sea. The Abyss is a corrupted portion of the Elemental Chaos, and Hell and Mount Celestia are locations in the Astral Sea.
The consolidated planes are going to present a more varied landscape wherever you go, and will allow you to transition locations without resorting to changing planes. Additionally, they will be more survivable by outsiders (no plane of pure fire with no air and nothing but tons of damage, for instance), and thus more conducive to adventuring. Personally, this change will mean nothing but good for our group, and I think for planar adventures in general.
—-
In any case, it has been explicitly said that it would be very easy to change both pantheon and cosmology from core. Even WotC’s own settings use different cosmologies and pantheons, and they are making it easy to switch things out.
“In any case, it has been explicitly said that it would be very easy to change both pantheon and cosmology from core. Even WotC’s own settings use different cosmologies and pantheons, and they are making it easy to switch things out.”
I’m honestly glad to hear that, because it really wouldn’t be as easy as you say unless I were to throw out previously published things like the Great Modron March that were specifically linked to the planes having a certain relationship. And beyond that, to me, it just makes more sense that, to use your own example, some planes aren’t easily survivable by outsiders, just like how in the real world there are some places not easily survivable by outsiders; it’s not like people would complain about needing to get special magical equipment or preparation to adventure on, say, the bottom of the sea, or inside a volcano.
For me two of the major parts of how “fun” a setting is to me (in terms of the Rule of Fun) are verisimilitude (not necessarily realism, but that things feel like they make an internal sense) and a continuity of setting. I hate throwing out facts about an area unless I have to, and once something’s established I would much rather, as either player or DM, have them worked around at worst rather than discarded completely. So if I were to use Planescape as is in 4e, I would need a good, solid, in-setting explanation for why it was different, because I would expect not only the characters, but also the NPCs to see there was a difference, and wonder why.
That’s also why those two and Ravenloft are amongst my favorite settings, because they bring together _all_ the settings and show that they’re all in the same multiverse; they weave them all and each other together into a single fabric, with different settings simply being segments of the quilt.
But if that sort of thing is easily swapped out, then I do feel better about 4e already. One thing I liked about 3e is 2e and 3e fluff was quite easily exchangeable; I kept my subscription to Dragon and Dungeon for years after the last edition shift, even though I was still playing 2e, just because I was still able to take concepts and areas, strip out the mechanics, and apply my own. I’d really like 4e to have the same capability if necessary.
(Also, just to poke a little, that actually wouldn’t work for Spelljammer, because Spelljammer was Material Plane only. In fact, folks on the planes tend to laugh at the idea of world-hopping in the Prime on a helm-fitted vessel. Bunch of wannabe-plane-travelers, the lot of them. :D)
Justin: Like many D&D players I came accross since I started this Blog thing I think you much prefered the 2e Settings and that’s fine.
Chances are, the People on Planewalker.com and other fan sites will offer an alternative to the 4e cosmology that you will like.
Thing is, as I can see from your little Poke at the end, if you want a 2e Setting in it’s entirety, I suggest you just chuck the whole ‘Worlds’ part of D&D 4e and adopt whatever you feel like. (Or stick with 2e 3.xe)
Otherwise, getting creative with what’s offered is a solution as Graham pointed out. Like adding ‘Material Worlds’ island/planets location to the Astral Sea and having SpellJammers between them… putting the ‘planes’ as far away islands surrounding the Material ones.
I for one love to take a proposed setting and morph it to my needs…. but I completely concede that your definition of the Rule of Fun may differ from mine…
i play planescape, too, and learning of the the great wheel removal really annoyed me. but if it’s just a meaningless paradigm shift for simplification’s sake, well thats okay i guess. as long as it means you can just put the great wheel back if you prefer it.
however, i think the only way for this to be really adaptable is if this cosmological reconfiguration only applies to some new prime world that the new rules are set in. if we’re getting rid of nostalgia for awesome, there’s no point in setting it in greyhawk, right? and if the new game is set on a new world, the other settings won’t have to retro-fit their cosmologies, or have some stupid event explain this.
for example, wheres the ethereal? if it’s gone, what really happened in all the novels when someone went ethereal? what alignment based spells have people been casting that don’t apply to the mechanics anymore. they have to leave the old settings alone i think
xfoo, thanks for re-posting your comment! And Welcome to the blog!
All valid points… What has been abandonned since 3e is the idea that all campaign settings co-exist in the same Multiverse (like planets in the ether)…
Your comment touches the core point of my post… when they needed to choose between Nostalgia (or legacy/Canon of the game’s various settings) and ‘fun’ (as defined by WotC: Action Heroics) they chose fun.
the idea is still there! and you can do it if you like, it’s worked out pretty well for my planescape game. the only thing thats really hard to shoehorn into a unified multiverse cosmology is mystara. you’d think it would be eberron, but mystara is really, really weird.
Wasn’t Mystara a D&D Cyclopedia-era Setting? I’m really mixed up in these 90’s setting… having spent them all playing Gurps!
yeah, also known as basic D&D. it incorporated blackmoor in it’s history, which as far as i can tell, was from some earlier, and even weirder incarnation of D&D that involved laser guns
Oddly enough Mystara wasn’t called Mystara in the Classic D&D age; it was just the Known World, and that was that. It was renamed “Mystara” when it was converted to AD&D, and promptly killed. As a default setting for D&D, I’d say it’s darned near perfect; name any other setting that’s got norsemen, two magocracies, rival Empires, merchant houses, bits of the wild west, tortles, dark elves, and dinosaurs and aztecs inside a Hollow World. Heck, the Known World concept of Immortals rather than Gods seriously rocks too. It’s still my favourite D&D setting, after all this time.
I like the Great Wheel concept a lot; it’s funkily elegant. That said, I’m quite happy that they’ve not tried to simplify it or squeeze it into the core books like an ill-fitting shoe. I’d much, much rather they bring out a decent Revised Planescape Campaign Setting for 4th Edition that deals with the Great Wheel cosmology properly. I’ll lay big odds that’s what they’ll do.
I’d buy it
CDM: Nah, that comment at the end wasn’t meant against anything. All I meant was the relationship between spelljamming travelers and planars is fairly strained, and mostly marked by teasing and mocking of each by the other.
And yeah, I’ll definitely admit that Graham’s idea is a solution. It’s not one I’d want to use myself, but it’s certainly one that could be used. I wasn’t trying to be dismissive of it or anything, just expressing how I prefer to do things in my games.
i’ll second greywulf’s 4e planescape endorsement, just in case it helps.
also i don’t think planes that were damaging, hard to reach or survive on without magic or resources was ever non-conducive to adventuring. it sounds more like adventure removal in that case
Justin: All cool my man, all cool!
Regardless that we choose to go or not go for 4e… times will be interesting ahead!
Indeed, I’d be much interested in that myself. And if that’s not one of the settings Wizards is reviving in 4e (though I certainly hope it is!), I’m sure that if nothing else, Planewalker’ll do something neat with it like CDM said earlier.
I would expect not only the characters, but also the NPCs to see there was a difference, and wonder why.
It’s easy enough to say “It’s always been this way.” For Planescape, all that needs to be done is:
- add portals
- make it so you can’t get between Astral Sea locations easily without portals
That’s exactly everything that needs to be done for it to work with the current cosmology. You can call it Retconning if you want to, but when you look at it, it could have always been this way and none of the denizens would ever have known the difference.
Bu switching back to the Great Wheel, there is one more issue you’ll need to deal with. Many (most?) outsiders no longer have Plane Shift abilities, thus trapping them on their respective planes.
for example, wheres the ethereal? if it’s gone, what really happened in all the novels when someone went ethereal?
Ethereal is, I believe, either the edge of the Shadowfell or the edge of the Feywild.
also i don’t think planes that were damaging, hard to reach or survive on without magic or resources was ever non-conducive to adventuring. it sounds more like adventure removal in that case
Well, we need to remember three things here.
In 3e, these planes impossible to survive on without magic.
In 3e, you could also be randomly shunted to a random plane, which included these.
…not fun.
In 4e, the locations that need magic to survive in do still exist, but not as planes. Fire, Water, Earth. All are part of the Elemental Chaos. As such, some parts of the EC will resemble each of the previous planes, including parts that are huge areas of raging inferno that you need magic to survive in.
Key difference: you don’t need a Plane Shift spell to get out if you run into trouble.
In 4e, not only would these planes be deadly to PCs, but since immunities are pretty much gone, they would also be deadly to their denizens. The plane of fire would become both deadly and empty, as nobody could survive there any more, due to fire immunity being all but gone.
—
…wow, that was a long comment.
Anyways, I have no problem with people putting the Great Wheel back in. I just want to make sure they know what they’re getting into by doing so, especially with the non-life-friendly planes.
Stockholm Syndrome, eh? I think the stats for that are in the disease chapter in the 1st edition DMG.
LOL Jeff, I’ve been perusing that brick since last week and I’m still surprised at how much Stuff (a lot of it excellent) Gygax stuffed in that overblown piece of Prose.
I may throw most of my D&D books out come June but the 1ed DMG is one of the books that keeps making the cut edition after edition.
I really like the fact that they’re doing a 4e for D&D. I played a lot of 2e, but never really got into 3.5, it came out after I stopped being able to game, but I still keep up with with rules, mostly through the computer game versions.
And having played a lot of the computer versions, I can see why they decided to do a 4e. Doing something more user-friendly and easy to computerize makes sense - they do a lot of cross-business with D&D computer games, and it appeals to the current RPG crowd who associate the MMO with RPGs. This is, of course, totally wrong-headed - just because I have to play computer RPGs to get my game on doesn’t make me pretend I’m actually role-playing. I don’t eat carob and pretend it’s chocolate either.
Still, some of the computer-game elements aren’t bad ones to incorporate - and there isn’t any real role-playing in computer games either. Not putting in a ton of role-playing specific rules is not a bad idea, though. Either you focus the game on role-playing and build the ruleset accordingly, or you focus in on action, and go down that road. Trying to do both probably makes it all half-baked. Besides, role-playing comes from the group and the GM, and easier, streamlined and fun combat in which no-one gets marginalized gives more time for role-playing, if the group is so inclined.
Hell, there’s always house rules if you want to do different stuff.
Like everyone in role-playing, I have been subjected to the hype machine that is 4e. My feelings having waffled from excitement to concern to intrigued and everywhere in between. So, it was with great degree of anticipation and trepidation that we gave one of those ‘playtest’ modules a try using the sample characters from D&D experience.
Now, with the understanding that this is not a full preview of the upcoming edition and some important elements were missing, my initial thoughts were…”I want to like it but something that I can’t quite name holds me back”. The combats were fine and characters certainly could do a lot. There were some neat things going on even if it tied us to a battle mat a bit more than I would have liked. However, it almost felt like the ‘heart’ was missing. Hopefully when the full books come out in June that element will be present.
I guess to sum it all up I am not as excited about this edition of D&D as I was about 3rd. Maybe its the Windows Vista to my Windows XP. It promises the world and looks pretty but it just doesn’t do what I want it to the do in the same way and I’m not sure I will be flushing my bookshelves of 3.x books just yet.
Deadshot:
Amusingly, I made the same Vista comparison while talking to Chatty earlier tonight.
I came to a far different conclusion, however. Y’see, I use and enjoy Vista. It fixes a lot of what was wrong with XP, and does certain things in a much more elegant and organized manner. People are skeptical, and some have had bad experiences. This is fine, and Vista won’t be for everyone, but it’s still working its way through a large-scale install base, and the problems that arise in those situations. Altogether, it’s an (IMO) superior product with some flaws that they are working on.
Now take that, and replace “Vista” with “4e”, “XP” with “3.X”, and “install base” with “playtesting”, and you have my thoughts about 4e thus far.
(If you prefer, you could use OSX instead of Vista for a similar argument from Mac users.)
Interesting how from a different point of view, the same analogy can mean something completely different.
Fair comments, Graham. My exposure to Vista has been limited and the things I don’t like about Vista from my initial uses are a matter of control. I don’t like the computer doing things that I don’t tell it to do. I don’t want auto-pilot I want to handle the driving myself. Maybe that’s the twinge I get when I played the 4e adventure. Too much stuff that I like to do has been taken out of my hands in favour of other things (micro-management).
My biggest issue is how healing works (again from a limited non-authorized playtest). I liked playing a cleric in 3.x e and don’t like how they have been seemingly neutered in 4e.
Still time will tell and full judgement can only be reserved until the books hit the shelves and a few sessions have been played to get a true feel for it. Still I wonder when 4e’s Service Pack 1 will be released?
Thing is, after using Vista since July, I’ve found it to be the exact opposite. Nothing happens without me explicitly telling Vista to do it. And yes, I run with the UAC on explicitly for this reason. I’m not entirely sure of what it was doing without your consent (was your experience possibly during Beta?), but I haven’t come across that.
Anyways…
Healing, eh?
Okay, I think I can see where you’re coming from. Though I think that you’re in the minority if you liked regularly playing a healing cleric in 3e. My experience has usually been that the cleric either doesn’t get played, or gets somewhat forced on a player.
That said, I do see what you mean. A healing ability not based off healing surges would be nice, though difficult to do as an at-will or encounter power. We may see such an ability, still. It just might not be at level 1.
Oh, there will be initial errata, for sure, as everyone figures out how to break their new system. But with the amount of work they’ve put into it, especially into the math, compared to 3e, I expect the errata to both not be as extensive as 3e’s was and to come out quickly.
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