Gapping a generation

So, I recently stumbled across an interesting post entitled "4E Plays Like A Video Game, and Thats [sic] Awesome". It's an older piece (from November 2010) and #DnDNext wasn't even a thing. I think I spotted in on someone's Twitter feed or something, but that's neither here nor there.

The reason I mention it is because it's quite well written and thoughtful and has some excellent points.

It also made me want to rage-barf!

The essence of his argument, as I understand it, is that the elements of 4E that drew the lion's share of criticism didn't deserve it because they made the game fun.

The spamming of At-Will powers while the Encounter and Daily powers were 'fire and forget' were okay because they were just like the cool down timers in video games. The hand waving healing where everyone takes a breather and is at full health again was all right because it kept the game moving. Any nod to realism was unnecessary because it was a game and games should be fun.

I hate every one of his arguments, but I can't really dispute them either. If that sort of stuff makes for a fun game for him and his friends, then... great! Good for them. Sincerely.

At the time, he was twenty six years old. I was thirty eight. Twelve years but it might as well have been a hundred and twelve. He grew up playing RPGs on the Xbox and computer. I played them on graph paper.

For me, the hand wave healing and powers were a break from the immersion. To me, immersing myself in my character and playing a role is the biggest draw in DnD and any other tabletop RPG. I have dozens of board games and video games that are all fun and all vying for my precious free time. A few are easy enough to lose myself in (Skyrim, Mass Effect, Deus Ex to name a few) but most are fun and carefree diversions.

I don't care how realistic the physics are in the Need For Speed series. I just wanna drive a ridiculously cool car at ridiculously stupid speeds.

I don't care if the Madden games portray injuries accurately. I just want to run a clock killing 80 yard drive.

I don't care if my Ultra-Marine is instantly healed whenever the bullets stop flying. I just wanna saw some Orks in half.

However, I do care if my carefully planned and conceived DnD character has to worry about cool down timers.

Yet Monte Cook and the WotC design team want to bring everyone together under one unified edition. A game with a foundation that will allow the old codgers like myself to sit at the same table as the twenty-something Gazebos of the world. I hope they can pull it off because that would be awesome.

Rolling of the dice

I'm glad this blog post came up, because it is an issue that I have -- surprise, surprise -- an opinion on, and it's something that we've discussed quite a bit at our game table.

For those that are too lazy to click the link above, the general gist is that over the years, melee combat has given the deciding factor -- the die roll -- to the player, rolling to-hit to overcome AC - THAC0, BAB or whatever system you like. Spellcasters and the like instead had to combat Saving Throws, but it was the DM's lucky dice that determined the outcome of that, not the players'. This gave all the drama (good and bad) to the melee characters, and the rest just had to sit back and be told whether their idea worked out.

We tried a few different solutions to this, including systems found in various other games, such as Oriental Adventures, Pathfinder, 3rd edition and 4e. Some of my players and I had come to the same conclusion as Monte Cook did, that they were getting gypped, and I must say, I liked the idea that the spellcaster had that variable in their spell's strength, combatting against their target's innate ability to resist it. We even toyed with moving the randomness of an NPC's attack against the party into the players' hands, turning AC into a defensive roll against a very static attack value that the enemy had. It sure made things easier on my side of the table, but in the end it felt a little unbalanced -- the players shouldn't really have that much "control" over their fate, and having the DM (whether deceptively or honestly) widening his eyes at a roll just made behind the DM shield can add to the suspense of the story as it unfolds. Not knowing if the goblin keeps missing because of low rolls by the DM or because the goblin isn't a threat is fun to leave to speculation; seeing that the goblin didn't hit you when you rolled a 6 on a defense roll tells you right out that you can turn your back on the goblin and focus on the hobgoblin captain instead.


That being said, I'm not vehemently opposed to any one method. They all work, and it was fun to dabble with different systems to stir things up. My voting in the polls that followed the blogpost weren't weighted to either extreme; I might have a preference for the players' fates being more in their own hands, but if the game design can keep the spellcasters engaged without it, I'll be fine with that too.

Everything that's old is new again?

Since you're here, you must know about the announcement of a new version of D&D being planned.

Since you're here, you probably noticed that this blog is going to be all about our opinions on where it should go, how it seems to be going, and, ultimately, where it ended up.

Since you're here, you possibly know that we've done this before. Go take a look if you didn't, to get a feel for what to expect.

The tl;dr version of our 4e blog: we didn't care much for roles; we didn't care much for the loss of customization (compared to 3.5); we did like the new encounter design (especially me, who's usually the DM). Do we have hope for this next version going "our" way? Perhaps it's too early to get my hopes up, but a post in Legends and Lore by Monte Cook left me a little hopeful:

Like simple rules for your story-driven game? You're good to go. Like tactical combats and complex encounters? You can have that too. Like ultra-customized character creation? It's all there.

In this game, you play what you want to play. It’s our goal to give you the tools to do so.

He also goes on to point out that D&D isn't just the rules, but the adventure, the story. That the rules are just a tool to provide some structure to the storytelling, to provide the suspense that you didn't know your story needed, or the twists that you never would have expected.

The story. Our group has been playing since 3rd edition was introduced, and we still revel in memories of adventures a decade gone. "The cowardly kobold Meepo in Sunless Citadel" that Cook mentions is our Meepo too, even though our stories of him are probably different than others'. Fleshshivering a dragon in mid-flight. Riding a beholder. Death-striking a dragon. Lightning-rodding party members. Citizens. Axiomatic rocs. All of these things bring back such fond memories of years gone by, and keep us coming back.

Our group is currently playing Pathfinder, having given 4e a somewhat fair shake. We had discussed revisiting 4e after a break, to see how we felt, but with this announcement, I don't know that we will. Some of us have applied to beta-test this next version, but if we can't (or depending on the NDA involved in such a thing), we'll write about our views here, and then use what we find out to decide if we're moving forward, or if we'll be stuck in our ways.

Cook says that their goal "is to make a game that all D&D players want to play." He says the right words so far, so let's see how they do.