D&D 4th edition rules and what we can learn from them...

[Mugen]

Another example is that D&D4e is designed from the beginning as a game with map and minis. In D&D3 you had the choice to play with or without board. Not in 4e anymore.

You know, one of the most recurrent complaint I heard about D&D 3.x is that it cannot be played without miniatures because of AoOs

The same could be said about Warhammer FRP (at least in its 1st edition, I never read 2nd edition), whose combat rules were designed with movement rules suited for (Citadel ?) minis. But I never heard anyone complain about this.

[Skunkape]

But I never heard anyone complain about this.

I think the main reason for complaints about DnD is due to the fact that they released 3.5 what oh 3 or 4 years ago and now we're getting yet another new version of the game. Oh and 3.5 came right on the heals of 3.0. I just think it's a reaction to a perceived notion that Wizards is just out to milk the fans of their money.

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

All I have gleaned about 4e is from the available articles on the Wizards site. I know 3.5E reasonably well as I have run it and my son currently runs it.

Played as drafted 3.5E created a structured hierachical approach to roleplaying that is not my favourite. I prefer PCs to retain intimations of their vulnerability to comparatively minor threats however experienced they may become i.e. know that it is possible to die in a melee from a knife thrust from some street thug (unlikely but possible).

From what I can see of 4E it appears that more emphasis is being given to structured progression from level to level e.g. making sure that gold piece acquisition is even in order to allow characters to have the right level of equipment for their level. As someone who routinely reduces cash and magical resources to their PCs and in D&D made even a +1 sword a signfiicant benefit for any character this is not an approach I prefer.

Also the change to 'squares' does imply a more map based approach to combat. I've run 3.5E and lots of other RPGs without a grid - miniatures/markers make life easier but are not essential.

Does 4E seem to focus more on the powers available to characters rather than on their personalities? Possibly from what I can see, however the influence of personalities on a game is usually the effect of the GM not the rules - rules always emphasise mechanisms over roleplay - the GM infuses the game with the cultures, the personalities and the environment which create roleplaying.

Is 4E still a roleplaying game? From what I can see it is. Is it the type of roleplay I want to play/run - probably not.

Regards

Edward

[Ars Mysteriorum]

You speak mainly from 3rd edition, no? I agree this is a rather cumbersome and not easy to use game. But its still a kind of roleplaying game for many people. 4e does not maintain this. They changed the 3e rules extremely. Its not more a rpg than say Advanced Heroquest or Heroscape or Warhammer Mordheim. Eg not using Miniatures and battlemaps is not intended, its a must. I would say playing it is a mix between a mmorpg computer game and board game. And DDI (D&D Interactive) the new subscribable online service of Wizards contributes to this feeling.

Yes I observed similar things. The D&D crowd is sometimes a strange kind of roleplayer.

Yup. I grew up with AD&D 2nd Ed. There was actually roleplaying there. A lot of roleplaying. I never read the 3rd ed. stuff... only 3.5, which was more in-line with 4th edition (though 4th seems MUCH more extreme in the direction it's taking). I played 3.5 a few times with the group I played with as a child... it was no longer roleplaying. We depended on dice for almost every interaction and the plot was wafer thin. The adventure called for constant combat to make us ignore the lack of plot (where in the past the games and rules always bowed down to the plot... kind of... we were kids!).

Hmmm... I think the D&D roleplayer would make the same argument of me, but I prefer old-school roleplaying... as in really getting INTO your roles, y'know?

That's kind of rambling. Anyways, I thought 3.5 quashed roleplaying as it was, but 4th seems to be going out of its way to show, "No... THIS is how you quash roleplaying!"

[Dredj]

I think the main reason for complaints about DnD is due to the fact that they released 3.5 what oh 3 or 4 years ago and now we're getting yet another new version of the game. Oh and 3.5 came right on the heals of 3.0. I just think it's a reaction to a perceived notion that Wizards is just out to milk the fans of their money.

I remember one year back in the 80's, I forget which year it was, but TSR came out with 3 different versions of AD&D, because the rules in the prior one just wasn't good enough. My friends and I thought it was just to milk the consumers. That pretty much did it for our love of AD&D. It was Warhammer Fantasy from then on (and we liked the Warhammer gaming system a lot better, anyway).

[Lord Twig]

I don't think you can really judge whether a Role-Playing Game is a Role-Playing Game based solely on whether or not you can role-play while playing it. I role-play while playing Talisman, but that doesn't make it a Role-Playing Game.

While the definition of what a Role-Playing Game is will always be a bit fuzzy, I think the best that can be said about D&D 4th Edition is that it has elements of a Role-Playing Game in it. It really is just a tactical miniatures skirmish game with persistent characters and a bit of story tacked on to give you are reason to keep playing.

It does have persistent characters, character growth and things like that.

Maybe we can just call it a Miniature Combat Role-Playing Game?

It is kind of a sub-set of Role-Playing Games like Compute Role-playing Games or Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games.

[Enpeze]

Anyways, I thought 3.5 quashed roleplaying as it was, but 4th seems to be going out of its way to show, "No... THIS is how you quash roleplaying!"

Agreed. On the other hand if you ignore the ridiculous fact that it still labels itself "rpg", D&D4e is a great and extremely clever designed combat system as such. I really like the rule mechanics for my weekly wargame session.

[Enpeze]

I don't think you can really judge whether a Role-Playing Game is a Role-Playing Game based solely on whether or not you can role-play while playing it. I role-play while playing Talisman, but that doesn't make it a Role-Playing Game.

While the definition of what a Role-Playing Game is will always be a bit fuzzy, I think the best that can be said about D&D 4th Edition is that it has elements of a Role-Playing Game in it. It really is just a tactical miniatures skirmish game with persistent characters and a bit of story tacked on to give you are reason to keep playing.

It does have persistent characters, character growth and things like that.

Maybe we can just call it a Miniature Combat Role-Playing Game?

It is kind of a sub-set of Role-Playing Games like Compute Role-playing Games or Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games.

Perfectly said. This is true in every aspect. The thing that most people dont seem to realize is that 4e is not just "another" D&D version. Its a holistic experience with all its computer assisted content and premade battlemaps and minis, a revolutionary concept and it goes in a different direction than traditional rpgs.

[fmitchell]

Not to disagree with your main point, but ...

I played 3.5 a few times with the group I played with as a child... it was no longer roleplaying. We depended on dice for almost every interaction and the plot was wafer thin. The adventure called for constant combat to make us ignore the lack of plot (where in the past the games and rules always bowed down to the plot... kind of... we were kids!).

A role-playing experience depends heavily on the DM/GM and the adventure. If you were using one of WotC's crap adventures, or your DM hadn't gained much experience since those halcyon 2nd ed. days -- and I have no way of knowing either -- then your D&D experience will disappoint. I've been fortunate enough to find a great GM, and we ran through a d20-based Midnight campaign that rocked.

That being said, the aforementioned GM house-ruled a number of skills (notably Diplomacy) and added his own roleplaying-dependent "bonus-point" system to supplement experience points. I also felt that the game crawled when we entered combat: "uh oh, time to suspend the story while we move minis around and calculate bonuses/penalties/AoOs ... and of course that one guy always wants to grapple ..."

So, I'll have to echo the assessment upthread that D&D 3.5 is mainly a skirmish-level combat game with a unified conflict resolution system, but as a platform for roleplaying it leaves much to be desired. Then again, I was never enamored of previous editions, although at least OD&D/BD&D/AD&D left a big blank that individual groups could fill in with whatever they wanted.

In contrast, BRP -- hey, remember that one? -- and newer generations of RPGs have simple and unified conflict resolution mechanics so you can get back to the story. The same GM who ran Midnight now runs a Spirit of the Century campaign, where non-combat conflicts involve only one or two die-rolls per scene, combat moves a lot faster, and characters move all around the area despite not having an actual board. He's also a big fan of BRP, which despite its "simulationist" roots basically involves simple or opposed skill rolls and characters defined more by what they know than how they fight.

[Nightshade]

Perfectly said. This is true in every aspect. The thing that most people dont seem to realize is that 4e is not just "another" D&D version. Its a holistic experience with all its computer assisted content and premade battlemaps and minis, a revolutionary concept and it goes in a different direction than traditional rpgs.

While I realize some elements of 4e are a more radical departure, I'll note I heard almost exactly the same kind of statements from some 1 and 2e D&D enthusiasts when 3e came out. Some went as far to say it "wasn't D&D" anymore. In this case its looking like from the outside that someone who doesn't really like it as an RPG is simply being reinforced in his dislike by increased emphasis on elements that make that so to him. To someone (like myuself) who doesn't consider using a battleboard to make something not an RPG, this just doesn't seem like a particularly strong argument.

[Harvey Walters]

My old RQ group used to play very high-level D&D and they had great fun with it, including spending 5 game-years researching the "Turn Stone into Blamanche" and turning an opponent's castle into a wobbling block of blamanche.

Sure, but I bet it still couldn't play tennis.

Michael Hoxie

[Centaur66]

I wonder when 4.5 D&D is due out...?!

[Ars Mysteriorum]

I wonder when 4.5 D&D is due out...?!

Let's look at the trend. There's been a dramatic shortening in the sequence of releases...

I say three days after release. No, six. And rest on the seventh day. We'll make it biblical.

[frogspawner]

A third example is that each class has a defined role on the board. There are tanks, strikers, AoE and Leaders (healers) like in my beloved WoW MMorpg. Btw. I play WoW also not as a roleplaying game.

Given the number of posts I see by people trying for niche protection in other games, however, I fail to see how a defined role in combat makes roleplaying impossible.

Of course you can role-play in any game, the question is just how well a given game supports RP.

But from the "roles" being defined for combat in 4E (tanks, strikers, etc), I fear WotC are trying to "move the goalposts" on roleplaying - they are trying to redefine what RP is. They seem to be saying: 'if your character performs their allotted function in combat then you are playing your role' - but that's not what I call role-playing.

I will state simply, *I* don't consider D&D as an RPG as it's designed. To me, it seems to work less under the assumption that players will be acting out the role and playing the persona. Just my opinion.

Yes, it's the persona that matters for real RP. It seems to me 4E is eroding that, or even trying to supplant it entirely. (So they can continue to claim "RPG" status for their new, personality-free D&D).

A related worry I have is the "Two year jump in story time line" that is mentioned for 4E. Does that mean there'll be no conversion of existing 3.x characters? If that's true, then goodbye to the character-continuity requirement of RP! Also, are they seeking to dictate what happens in every D&D GM's personal setting? Or are they asserting there is only one world (or a few) for D&D play - and it/they are the property of WotC?

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

Yes, it's the persona that matters for real RP. It seems to me 4E is eroding that, or even trying to supplant it entirely. (So they can continue to claim "RPG" status for their new, personality-free D&D).

A related worry I have is the "Two year jump in story time line" that is mentioned for 4E. Does that mean there'll be no conversion of existing 3.x characters? If that's true, then goodbye to the character-continuity requirement of RP! Also, are they seeking to dictate what happens in every D&D GM's personal setting? Or are they asserting there is only one world (or a few) for D&D play - and it/they are the property of WotC?

Wizards are entitled to claim what they want - the chance of 'supplanting entirely' the persona led element across the industry is, I believe, non-existent given the large number of other products out there.

I think the two-year jump in story line is probably for Forgotten Realms. Wizards can do what they like with their own setting.

Given we are all aiming to support BRP, I am not sure what this thread is actually adding - decrying a Wizards product that has not been released is a little pointless in the context of this forum isn't it?

Regards

Edward

[deleriad]

Given we are all aiming to support BRP, I am not sure what this thread is actually adding - decrying a Wizards product that has not been released is a little pointless in the context of this forum isn't it?

Exactly. Sadly, there are those out there who feel an emotional need to trash D&D which tends to undermine threads like these. Personally, I like looking at other games and seeing what new ideas they come up with and then, if I like them, seeing how to adapt them for my purposes. What's interesting to me about D&D4e has less to do with the mechanics - which haven't changed that much - but the implementation. As far as I can tell, you could implement BRP in exactly the same way that they have chosen to implement D&D. In fact, RQ4:AiG, did exactly that by writing the combat mechanics explicitly from the perspective of figures on a grid.

The other thing that strikes me is that the game rules are explicitly written so that every character can be involved in every action. Combat is the clearest example. Now, to simplify, a mage can attack with a blast spell that does about the same damage as a bow and as frequently as a person with a bow can do. Relatedly, it takes more than one hit to take down a beginning character because they can keep bouncing back up for a while.

Clearly, the new edition has been written in the context of MMORPGs and mini games and draws on what has made them popular. Although I've no interest in playing D&D of any edition, there's a lot of insights to steal from it.

[Nightshade]

Of course you can role-play in any game, the question is just how well a given game supports RP.

But from the "roles" being defined for combat in 4E (tanks, strikers, etc), I fear WotC are trying to "move the goalposts" on roleplaying - they are trying to redefine what RP is. They seem to be saying: 'if your character performs their allotted function in combat then you are playing your role' - but that's not what I call role-playing.

In a game that is heavily focused on combat, it _is_ what I'd call niche protection however. Given that D&D is far from alone in a heavy influence on combat, I just can't see how that makes it not-a-roleplaying-game unless "roleplaying" is only considered present if combat isn't the main focus of the game--which would include some other genres in general. There's only ever been one class that wasn't primarily about its combat role, but that's just about as true of most superhero games too.

[Nightshade]

Exactly. Sadly, there are those out there who feel an emotional need to trash D&D which tends to undermine threads like these.

I'm really less bothered by that than the need by some to apparently stake out the turf of "roleplaying game" to only those run in the style they happen to like. I'm pretty damn sure that a lot of BRP games aren't in practice being run as roleplaying games by these people's standards, and I'm not sure there's anything about their design that makes them better about this than even 4e from listening to their objections; in some cases "better game balanced" sounds like it translates into "not a roleplaying game".

[Dredj]

I stopped at my FLGS today, and asked why there wasn't much in the way of rpgs on the shelves, anymore. The employee there said they pretty much just sell D&D style products and there's really not much demand for anything else. So I asked him about D&D number 4. He heard that it was designed more for convention play, as they found that people at conventions like to go from table to table and play their miniatures--without having to do too much role playing. But he admitted that it was hearsay, and he hadn't actually looked at the rules yet. However, he heard that people who are into D&D (and got to play some of it) LOVE the mechanics of the new edition.

This is a bit off topic, but i realized just how much the artwork of an rpg can make people really want to buy it. There was a bunch of books for "Castles & Crusades" and the artwork was really good. I almost bought a supplement for it because of the maps and the art. The employee at the store said he heard the gameplay of Castles & Crusades was ok, but when it comes to fantasy role playing, D&D is pretty much the only game that people really flock to.

Basically, BRP will probably never be seen on the shelves of my FLGS, because more and more people are going for miniatures games;-(

[Harshax]

On the other hand . . .

you have Games+ in Mount Prospect, IL.

While they have a significant shelf space of D&D stuff, they still stock tons of other games. RQ Monster Coliseum still commanded rack space there not just a few months ago. They even have HarnMaster supplements.

It all depends on the storekeeper

[Lord Twig]

A related worry I have is the "Two year jump in story time line" that is mentioned for 4E. Does that mean there'll be no conversion of existing 3.x characters? If that's true, then goodbye to the character-continuity requirement of RP! Also, are they seeking to dictate what happens in every D&D GM's personal setting? Or are they asserting there is only one world (or a few) for D&D play - and it/they are the property of WotC?

4th edition has a built in "Ending". Each character is supposed to be created with a final Epic Destiny in mind. After a character reaches 30th level they embark on their final adventure and achieve that epic destiny, and therefore leave the game.

Congratulations! You won D&D! You are now free to create a new character and start over again!

Epic Destinies:

4th Edition Excerpts: Epic Destinies

As for converting 3.5 to 4.0, I don't think they are at all concerned with it. It appears to me that they expect everyone to just "finish" their game, make new characters and start over in 4.0. You don't have to get rid of your world though! You can just have some world shattering catastrophe explain all of the changes that are taking place. They even give you ideas how to do it.

Catastrophic Endings:

Steal This Hook! - The Sky Is Falling!

[Harshax]

this thread has 1d3 chaos features.

[Trifletraxor]

this thread has 1d3 chaos features.

I rolled them acording to the BRP chaos feature table. It was 2:

1) Owerpowering stench causes nausea in any who breath near it.

and...

2) Hideous appearance of creature demoralizes those who it beats in a POW vs. POW resistance roll.

Pretty nasty!

SGL.

[Harshax]

I rolled them acording to the BRP chaos feature table. It was 2:

Either you fudged those rolls, or vBulletin has a Chaos Table Hack.

[rust]

Hideous appearance of creature demoralizes those who it beats in a POW vs. POW resistance roll.

Hideous indeed, and I really feel somewhat demoralized by it ... :eek:

The question whether D&D 4.0 is an RPG or not must have a lot of POW ...