D&D podcast and 4th Ed

[Joose]

This week, I have been mostly listening to the official D&D podcasts, specifically the ones that are just recordings of the Penny Arcade guys playing. They are most entertaining, as is probably unsurprising when you get a bunch of guys together whos job is to make with the funny.

Its also giving me the creeping realisation that D&D 4th Ed maybe isnt actually total crap. Its just different. I'm slowly adjusting to the idea that the good differences may make up for the bad differences. Im still not sure thats the case, but hearing it being played, a lot of those changes actually make a lot more sense.

Plus, one of the big issues I had with 4th Ed to start with was that it had all the depth of a childs paddling pool. They have since released a lot more content.

I shall investigate further and report my findings.

[Grimmie]

Note to Joose: I am not learning 4th ed. <3

[Joose]

Note to Joose: I am not learning 4th ed. <3

Haha, not suggesting you should. My interest is purely academic at this point.

[Joose]

Ok, just been flicking through the players guide over lunch, but here are my thoughts so far:

4th edition may actually be not shit after all.

I think the problem comes from the fact that its familiar, but different. Its a bit like if the new Deus Ex turned out to be a straight forward FPS. It wouldnt matter how good an FPS it was, people would pan it for not having the RPG elements. Even if it was the best FPS ever, a lot of people would be upset becuase its not what they were expecting.

Thats what appears to have happened here. Its not that its better or worse than 3.5, it is just that what it is trying to achieve isnt exactly the same as what 3.5 was trying to achieve. It might be tricky to explain what I mean without the terminology im using making it sound like I prefer one over the other, so I'll make it absolutely clear now: from what ive read so far, I dont think 4th edition is better or worse than 3.5. Not in absolute terms. It all depends on what you want out of an RPG.

The strengths of 3.5 are that it is deep and complex. Its tending towards the fantasy world simulation end of the RPG spectrum.
The strengths of 4th are that it is accesable and fun. It tends towards the more arcadey style of RPG game play.

The problem with that is that people who prefer 4th edition style play are looking at 3.5 and thinking its super-complicated and nerdy, with complaints like characters needing to take the right kind of bread on their questing or they will die of malnutrition, or needing to read through books several feet thick and developing a grasp of advanced mathmatics to play. Proponents of 3.5 on the other hand, are looking at 4th edition and complaining that its p&p WoW, all wizzboom fights and retarded oversimplification to bring D&D down to the level of the lowest common denominator. The reality of seems to be that both of these views are exaggerated bullshit.

A few of us play 3.5, so we know that although its not super easy, its not incomprehesably complicated either. Although there are enough 3.5 books to construct a rudimentary shelter for a small family, you really only need to have access to a fraction of them, and unless you are the DM you only need to skim through the relevant bits to you to be able to get stuck in. There is a lot of depth and complexity, but up to a point you only need to use as much as you want.

On the flipside, 4th edition really isnt as dumbed down as it might first appear. For and example, lets take alignments. In 3.5, you are a combination of either Good, Neutral and Evil with Lawfull, Neutral and chaotic. Basically the same system exists in 4th, except they have cut out Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good. When I first saw that, I was all "Whaaaaaat? But the aligment system was great! Why dick about with it?" Then I started thinking about why they might have got rid of what they have, and I realised something: What is the difference between Chaotic Good and Neutral Good? One doesnt have to obey the laws, and the other doesnt like obeying the laws. Er...yeah, when its put like that, there is a pretty fucking fine line between the two. Same with Lawful Evil: One likes obeying laws, and the other obeys laws if he likes. Does that really need differentiation? Or does combining them into just straigh Evil and Good alignements reduce the amount of "but whats actually the difference?" style arguments over alignment, without actually taking away anything anyone will miss?

A lot of the other changes that D&D vets balked at are a bit like that too. Yes, a lot of the terms used in the books are a bit MMO like. But a lot of them are just putting names to stuff that was in 3.5 anyway. Yes, they go on about certain classes being support, and others being tanks (slightly different actuall words, but thats exactly what they mean). It doesnt mean anything though, other than "Hey, Fighters and paladins can be quite good at taking the punishment whilst the wizards hide behind them throwing spells around". Players did that already in 3.5, its just that no one ever called the wizard DPS. Its what they were though. If you dont like it, just dont use those words. Suddenly, its exactly like 3.5 again.

On the subject of the WoWiness of 4th Ed; I dont think they did themselves any favours by making the art style used throughout the books look like WoW fan art. Dont get me wrong, its good art, but if they had used the more traditional fantasy look, or even a more modern but impressionistic look like SR or Eclipse Phase, people would have been a lot less quick to shout "OMG! WoW!"

There are definate changes too, and some of them really are for the better. I was entirely unconvinced by the Encounter/Daily powers thing at first. In case you havent read it, in 4th Edition things like spells, or triggered feats like Cleave, are either At Will, Encounter or Daily abilities. In other words, you can do them At Will (as much and as often as you want), once per Encounter (a fight scene, basically) or once a Day. The more powerfull the thing, the less often you can do it. When I originally read through that, I really didnt like it. It seemed horribly artificial, and looked like it made spellcasters able to just spam the place with magical affects. In practise though (having listened to those podcasts) its actually been balanced pretty well. It means that everyones characters always have something in some way usefull they can do, but doesnt make mages uber powerfull. As someone who has played low level mages in more than one D&D game, the idea that you no longer are going to have a single Magic Missile spell you can cast before turning into a useless bimbling fantasy-nerd is quite appealing.

Im still not sure about all of it though. The idea of a hard level cap still strikes me as a bit....odd. Although, to be honest, getting characters to that sort of stage in any RPG is a rarety. If you do get there, things tend to start getting a little silly too, so most of the time you will want to retire your dood and roll something new anyway. In reality, im not sure its ever likely to be an issue, but it still sort of un-nerves me for some reason. The other thing im not sure about is the choice of starting races provided in the Players Handbook. Its not a massive problem, but a couple of them are a bit wierd, and feel like they should have been added in at a later date via some sort of expansion. Dragon men? Really? And why give players a choice between traditional elves, or what appear to be some sort of Super Elves: just like normal elves but more so. Its not that they are bad as such, they are just peculiar. I dont get the reasoning behind including them. Of course, if you really dont like them, its easy to fix. You just dont use them.

Anyway, all in all, now that im looking it with a fresh pair of eyes and actively trying to be impartial, it actually looks pretty good. I'll try the DM guide next, see if it makes my eyes vomit or something.

[Dog Pants]

I remember trying to convince you ages ago that 4th ed wasn't as bad as you thought. Just saying

From what I remember it seems you've come to almost exactly the same conclusions I did. The thing about spellcasters running out of spells being probably the most prominent, since I remember being a chocolate teapot for half of pretty much every low level adventure I played as a magic user. Ultimately all that happened is we rested after every encounter, which had exactly the same effect but in game took longer and felt like it broke continuity. The level cap you mentioned is also there in 3.5 - it's 20 there, dunno about 4th ed. I don't like it though, I've had characters past 20 and the thought of either having to retire them or never advancing them again is very offputting.

Ultimately I think I prefer 3.5, because I don't mind the level of complexity (it's easier than 2nd ed) and I think it has more structural depth for your characters. However, I'd play 4th ed if it was on offer.

[Joose]

I remember trying to convince you ages ago that 4th ed wasn't as bad as you thought. Just saying

Oh absolutely. Im making no attempt to deny that I was one of those people who unfairly dismissed it.

Ultimately I think I prefer 3.5, because I don't mind the level of complexity (it's easier than 2nd ed) and I think it has more structural depth for your characters. However, I'd play 4th ed if it was on offer.

This. I'm a sucker for New Things, so the fact that every new thing will be in 4th almost inevitably means I'll end up playing it at some point though. At least now I'm less worried about it

[Joose]

You know what, after listening to a bunch of podcasts of the penny arcade guys playing 4th, I have figured out they key thing that makes me prefer 3.5 to 4th. Im not sure I can put it into words effectively, but I'm going to give it a go.

4th edition puts too much emphasis on the "game" part of RPG, and not enough on the role-play part. Throughout the podcasts, they spend the whole time discussing the mechanics involved: they should use this encounter power now, because they think the encounter is about to end, they should use this power as it will trigger an attack of opportunity based on that power, allowing the other character to use this piece of equipment, and so on.

No, I know that different groups approach games differently, so some of is is probably just down to different styles of play. A large part of it is down to the design of the game though. The way the whole thing is structured has you thinking about the rules the whole time. Whilst in 3.5 you think "this is what I want to do, how do the rules deal with that", 4th is more along the lines of "here are the things the rules allow me to do, which one shall I pick". Which is all well and good if you just want to roll your characters, hit things in the head and go "hurrah", but the most memorable and enjoyable moments in RPGs (in my opinion at least) are not due to dice rolls and rules, they are when people are playing their character in an amusing way, or coming up with some madcap scheme that isn't explicitly spelled out in the books. That's not to say that the new rules stop you from doing that, they are just too...in the way. Too obvious, too invasive. They don't stop you doing these things, but they stop you thinking of doing these things.

It's a similar problem to the music in the recent Tron film. On the one hand, the music is excellent. It's one of the best original soundtracks to a film I have ever heard. I regularly listen to It in the car, as it makes driving slowly through rush hour traffic on the M1 seem *EPIC*. But in the film, it was too good. It was too in your face. Too obvious, too invasive. It meant that the whole time, I didnt feel like I was watching a film with a good soundtrack, I felt like I was listening to music whilst pretty pictures flashed by. The music wasn't bad, but it was wrong for a film.

That's the problem I have with 4th ed. The rules are not bad, they are just wrong for an RPG. They turn D&D from a role playing game, into a tabletop MMO. Which is, I guess, what everyone was complaining about in the first place.

[Grimmie]

That's pretty much what I got from listening to the podcasts too - they do have some genuinely fun RPG moments with Chris Perkins during the PAX games, but that's mostly because he's the freakin' creative director, and he's paid a lot of money to make original, fun scenarios.

The other thing that really narked me about 4th ed was the "At will" powers, which are powers you can use every single round as an attack. While they're fun to use (which I guess is why they introduced them), they practically replace the default weapons. The fighter used his "Chop it to pieces" (paraphrasing here) power every single turn, instead of just his "longsword", which sort of devalues it. Your weapons aren't meant to be epic tools of destruction while you're starting off, and your special abilities are meant to be special. The at will powers makes the special mundane, and the normal obsolete.

[Grimmie]

P.S. I quite like the 4th ed artwork, Jason Engle's brilliant.
http://jasonengle.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Joose]

P.S. I quite like the 4th ed artwork, Jason Engle's brilliant.
http://jasonengle.deviantart.com/gallery/

Jason Engle is brilliant. He is also entirely absent from the 4th ed Players Guide.

[The Shutting Downs]

I bought the 4th ed rulebook when it came out.

To be fair, I can see what they are doing, and the rules do seem to flow okay but

Yes, there will always be a 'but'

It's not D&D, I can see how it could be a gateway to 'proper' D&D (I never had a problem calculating THAC0, sorry), but it's a different game entirely.

Could I have fun playing it? after watching the guys play on the video of thier podcast, yes I think I could, but they managed to keep everything straight with a LOT of cards showing thier abilities. It looks fun, but to my mind, it's a D&D/MMO cross, not the game itself.