Part I -- Continuity of Rules

The foremost problem I see with 4E is as follows. I do expect some continuity with the rules of the game as previously constructed (OD&D, 1E, 2E, 3E, etc.). There's a lot of the mechanics of D&D that I want to be a "shared experience" (as they have for a few decades now), and to be communicated between playgroups and even generations of players. (For example, fathers and sons can enjoy baseball as being fundamentally the same game when either one was a teenager.) Unfortunately, the designers of 4E have made it pretty explicit that they feel free to start everything over totally from ground zero -- they're re-evaluating everything in the game from the ground up, and tossing in new stuff from scratch anywhere it strikes their fancy here in late 2007.

Here's a few examples that I can currently dig up (picking many off ENWorld's news site at http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e ):
- Standard Races & Classes in the PHB are being totally altered. Apparently out are gnomes, half-orcs, barbarians, druids, bards, monks, etc. In come tieflings, eladrin, warlords, and warlocks. (As I may point out several times, compare the continuity of 1E->3E to this lineup in 4E.) Paladins can be any alignment, etc.
- Wizards don't memorize daily spells anymore (also called the "Vancian" magic system). Instead, they have fixed, "siloed" powers -- some usable every round, some every few minutes, some once a day. They have some kind of "weaponized" accoutrement whereby they have to arm themselves with an orb, scepter, staff, or book to cast spells. There's a designer quote that "Wizards will be able to cast 25th-level spells." And I guess Fighters have similar Powers themselves that work kind of like magic (as seen in some late 3.5 supplements).
- Classes aren't categorized by the classic four primary classes anymore -- you've got these 4 "Roles" which categorize classes by Leader, Defender, Striker, or Controller (for some reason).
- 1st-level characters are designed to be inherently "head and shoulders" above normal people in the world. (Presumably like Star Wars Saga starting 1st-level PCs off with 3 Hit Dice). Levels are said to come faster but make less of a difference from step-to-step. PHB goes from levels 1-30, which a lot of people are saying cover the same "sweet spot" as classic levels 4-14 or so.
- Saving Throws no longer exist. Instead, you've now got fixed defense scores (like magic Armor Classes) that magical enemies roll their attacks against.
- There's some kind of "condition track" whereby lost hit points degrade your abilities (creating, I suppose, a kind of "death spiral"). Spells are being totally revised; fireball doesn't do d6/level damage anymore, for example. Save-or-die spells are gone, being turned into hit point damage that triggers the condition track (it appears).
- The D&D cosmology of the "Great Wheel" is wiped out and replaced with totally different, new stuff. There's a new division between devils & demons -- demons are actually some sort of corrupted Elementals, now, I guess.
- Magic Items don't have prices or rules for PC construction, apparently (a great tool in 3E).
- Challenge Ratings are gone (another great tool in 3E).
- Alignment is heavily revised, apparently.

Anyway, I could go on and on and on. Suffice to say that lots of the shared experiences from OD&D up through 3E are being wiped out and replaced with completely different mechanics. (Which is even more disturbing when you compare 30 years of development and fine-tuning to the very rushed time constraints that the 4E writers seem to be under in late 2007.) Let me pick out one illuminating quote from the designers:

You can't really just convert a character directly from 3e to 4e. We pretended you could do that from 2e to 3e, but that conversion book was pretty well bogus. The fact is, as I explained it a lot at GenCon, that your character isn't what's on your character sheet: your character is the guy in your head. The character sheet is how the guy in your head interacts with the rules of the game. The rules of the game are different, so you'll be creating a new implementation of that character, but the character needn't change much.

(That's James Wyatt writing in his blog here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=906388 ). Got that? It's actually impossible to convert a character from 3E to 4E. While there was a widely-used conversion book published for the 2E->3E switch, the designers are saying that no such conversion system is possible from 3E->4E. The best you can do is to take the general "feel" of your character (or monster or adventure setting) and reconstruct it from scratch in 4E. That's definitely a first, as it wasn't the case in any previous switchover points between versions of D&D -- that's just how different 4E is from anything that came before it.

There are stories from playtests where monsters have thousands and thousands of hit points, clerical healing fires off automatically at the same time as they attack, and the players feel like they're playing a completely brand new game and have absolutely no idea how something as simple as a goblin or a zombie is going to function against them. And the designers are trumpeting all of this as specifically a good thing. Me, I think it's a bad thing that you can't use all your preceding understanding and materials for D&D at all anymore.

One thing I'll say is that this "accelerate the changes" mode of designing is very much consistent with the movement I saw in the 3.5 Revised rules (which I also skipped). At that time, I identified the rather encyclopedic changes to the spell lists as radically more different than all the changes from 1E->3E combined (see my report here: http://www.superdan.net/down3-5.html ). In my opinion, it seems like 3E made some noticable changes to the game; 3.5 was a test to see how widespread changes could be and still have acceptable sales (with ever-accelerating changes through later supplements); and 4E is finally embracing an entirely different kind of game.

Probably No 4E For Me

It's been about 2 months now since 4E D&D was announced at Gen Con 2007. There's been a lot of marketing push online to create "buzz" around it since then. Previously, I played 1E religiously, skipped 2E, and then came back and played a lot (and even published some) 3E. Now it looks pretty clear that I will be again skipping the upcoming 4E. I know I could go on at great, great length about this -- but here's my attempt at some concise reasons why. I'll expand on each in upcoming posts.

(1) Continuity of rules
(2) Digital initiative
(3) Promise of OGL

Evolution of the Business Case

It's interesting to think about D&D's evolution from assuming you were selling adventure materials almost exclusively to DMs (at a presumed 1:20 player ratio! OD&D Vol. 1, p. 5), to selling lots of player-boosting aids (2E and 3E), to recommending that DM's be removed from the game entirely (Ryan Dancey in August '07).

It's like the business case for finding some way to sell stuff to the big end of the 1:20 DM/player ratio being a superpredator that consumed the whole idea of the original game.

Basic Set with Character Generation

This is something of a cross-post from a discussion at ENWorld. Once again there's been a discussion of "how to simplify the new player experience" that usually turns into calls to use pre-generated PCs, or templates or stock packages, etc. I rather strongly disagree with that, and here's why:

A lot of the addictive goodness in D&D comes from playing your own, personalized, unique character. The new player experience simply must have that element. The way they pick a character really has to be the same core process that the rest of us use, so they can cleanly interface with the rest of the rules after they play the first time.

To me, that means that the core process itself has to get whittled down. After a lot of thought, I have a campaign that does this:
- 4 core races
- 4 core classes
- No skill points (see Unearthed Arcana)
- Only class bonus feats (i.e., none at 1st level)
- Spontaneous divine casters (see Unearthed Arcana)
- Fixed starting spell lists for spellcasters (in 3 flavors)

Therefore, 1st-level character generation looks like this, for all players:
- Roll abilities & arrange
- Pick race & class, roll hit points
- Spellcasters choose starting faction (spellbook)
- Buy equipment (from one-page basic list)

I think that's easy enough for first-time players, but it's not any different for expert players in my campaign. If you want expanded options, those are all pushed to higher levels: new spell selections, fighter feats start at 2nd level, etc. If you have expert players and that's not enough for them, start them at higher level, to whatever point the number of options match their taste.

A really important thing to remember is that D&D's hugest growth came in the 1978-1984 era when they had the "Basic Blue Set", limited to levels 1-3, and was intended to directly connect with the larger AD&D ruleset that was coming out at the same time. For some reason, TSR/WOTC has avoided that ever since, and IMO it's the biggest ongoing mistake the company ever made.


To recap: Player choices are great; just push some of the choices to higher levels. Start new players at first level, and expert players at higher levels if so desired. 3E has too many of the choices front-loaded at first level.

Castles!

I've been doing some extra reading on historical castles lately. I've hit on a wonderful architectural book: "Castles: Their Construction and History" by Sidney Toy. It's got almost 200 detailed maps and floor plans, so it's about the best resource for nearly game-ready historical maps that I can think of. Here's a few random thoughts:

Porting a small amount of magic into a historical milieu wouldn't change things a whole lot. Within a few pages of medieval siege chronicles, there's several references to what could be considered the belief in magic in the first place:
- "Among the engines of the crusaders there was one which threw enormous stones with unusual force. It did great execution among those on the battlements and the enemy's attacks on it had no effect. The Turks then brought up two witches and set them on the wall in order that they might curse it; but a missile from the engine struck and killed both the witches as well as three other women who were with them." (Siege of Jerusalem, 1099; p. 146).
- "The fleet, having erected on their galleys a tall siege tower and other engines, all covered with raw hides, made a vigorous attack on the Tower of Flies. Those in the tower, assisted by the citizens who came to their aid, responded with equal energy; they threw Greek fire on the siege tower, and on the other machines of their foes, and by this means destroyed them, and so the attack from this side failed." (Siege of Acre, 1189-1192; p. 147)
- "Greek fire, having the property of spreading in all directions, was thrown from the engines of the Saracens on the Crusaders to their great terror and consternation." (p. 143)

These last two quotes force me to think of replacing historical Greek fire (poorly understood by the Crusaders, and something of a mystery even to this day) with one or two wizards casting fireballs, and having much the same effect.

The other thing that occurs to me, is that even if some amount of flying magic or creatures are a concern in the setting, the likely technological response would be to simply halt castle evolution at the stage of strong square and round keeps, as seen in the 10th and 11th centuries. (That is, the evolution of large curtain walls and bailey complexes in the 12th and 13th and later centuries might be arrested.) In other words, the presence of some amount of magic and fantastic creatures might itself serve to retard certain technological progress beyond a low-middle-ages level.

Software Tool for 3E: OGCombatWin

I just completed a tool that I was aching for over a long time. What it does is automatically simulate several thousand combats in 3E D&D with any monster you enter, and evaluate what level of NPC fighter would be evenly matched against it. I'm using this as a super-fast starting point for CR evaluations of new (or advanced or modified) monsters. OGCombatWin only evaluates raw attacks (melee or ranged), against as many opponents as you'd like. It doesn't handle any spells, magic, or special abilities, so you'll still need to evaluate or playtest to come up with hard CR numbers (usually more devaluation is needed at higher levels).

In fact, I've found this incredibly fun to play around with, and I'm finding it to be a really useful tool for exploring how the 3E CR system fits together. One thing I've been really surprised by is how well the x2 monsters = +2 EL rule works -- it's not perfect, but it's close to correct a whole lot more than I originally would have guessed. Try it out, it's kind of fun! (I also provide all the source code if you want to see it or improve it.)

http://www.superdan.net/software/

Playtest Party Stats

Recently I've been doing some playtests for a potential reduced d20 System game. Among the things I worked up is a nice page of standard statistics for NPC parties of levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. I've found this pretty useful -- you might check it out under "Standard Party Statistics" located here: http://www.superdan.net/dnddocs.html