After reading The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange, I’ve decided to start getting back into roleplaying gaming (one could reach that conclusion by simply noting the existence of this blog, I suppose).

As any of my former gaming compatriots can tell you, I’ve always held a certain disdain for Dungeons & Dragons. I first played D&D in seventh grade, somewhere around 1977 or 1978. It introduced me to a hobby that I actively pursued for nearly the next twenty years.

Through the rest of junior high school and high school I played a number of games, including Traveller, Car Wars, Space Opera and several others.

Early in my college years, after complaining to a friend that I wanted a more realistic, yet playable system, I was introduced to the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, or GURPS. This was a game I could sink my teeth in to. It was realistic, yet very playable. And I faithfully played GURPS for many years, including a GURPS Fantasy campaign that lasted more than a decade.

Recently, I discovered that D&D 4th Edition was released, so I went out and bought Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebooks, 4th Edition.

Why, you might ask. Why change systems when I already know GURPS? There are two reasons:

1. I didn’t want to have to invent an entirely new world from scratch. I can just use the world details from D&D.
2. D&D is, by far, the most played roleplaying game out there. There are a lot of players out there, so I’ll have a larger pool to find good players.

Enough ancient history. My first impressions of D&D 4th Edition. Most of this will be parsed in response to the criticisms I’ve heard from those who’ve reviewed it before.

One caveat: I haven’t played any scenarios yet. I’ve only familiarized myself with the rules and run a few sample combats to see how the system works. That being said, most of the criticisms I’ve heard are just dumb.

Common Complaint: D&D 4th Edition pidgeon-holes characters into very specific roles.

My response: You’re playing D&D. D&D has always had character classes. That, in and of itself, pidgeon-holes characters! If you’ve been playing D&D since the basic set or AD&D days, you’ve been playing a pidgeon-holing game for almost thirty years. Why are you objecting to it now? Fourth Edition is certainly doing more of that now, with the inclusion of roles. Roles are detailed in each classes’ description, and the game mechanics encourage players of each class to play those roles in combat encounters. But roles aren’t hard-and-fast rules, they are suggestions based on the revised mechanics of the game.

Common Complaint: 4th Edition doesn’t include my favorite class, race, etc. in the core rules.

My response: Get over it, Mary. The new Player’s Handbook is more than 300 pages long. I’ve read damn near the whole book. Apart from a few full-page pieces of artwork, there’s not a lot of fluff. It goes into great detail for every character class (which includes: Clerics, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Rogues, Warlocks and Wizards) and race (Dragonborn, Dwarf, Eladrin, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, Human and Tiefling). There are also chapters on Skills, Feats (which you gain by leveling and they are roughtly analogous to advantages in GURPS), Equipment, Combat and Rituals (which I would describe as “adventuring” spells. Not usable in combat, but in the rest of the game).

With all of this included — in just the Player’s Handbook — including more classes and races would add many pages to the book. Wizards of the Coast can’t include everything. That would be dumb business. Which brings me to my next complaint.

Common Complaint: Wizards is going to put all the stuff I want in other books, so I’ll have to buy them.

My response: Yes, they are. First and foremost, Wizards of the Coast is a business, which has to pay rent, payroll, printing costs, utilities, maybe employee benefits, insurance, etc. They need to make money. If they don’t, they’ll cease to exist.

But more importantly, they need new players to come to the game. Me, for instance. I’d much rather drop a hundred bucks for the core rules than 300. Maybe that’s just me. If a new player might be interested in playing the game, they can pay about $30 for the Player’s Handbook, and as long as they’re not DMing, they’re good to go.

It is in the best interests of Wizards of the Coast — and the whole RPG community — to keep the barrier of entry to the hobby as cheap as possible. Get ‘em interested and get ‘em playing. Once they’re hooked, some will inevitably want to try their hand at DMing and buy the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide, others will want to expand their character possibilities and buy the Player’s Handbook 2.

But if you were to tell some guy who wants to try DMing D&D again, “oh, you’ll need to buy these three eighty-dollar books to get started,” he’s going to think twice. When you have a hobby that’s competing with Worlds of Warcraft, the internet in general, television, sports, sex, drugs, rock and roll and drinking, you want the entry to your hobby to be cheap and painless. Later on you can expand your library and create a richer gaming experience, but you don’t want to throw the whole kitchen sink at new players right from the start — you’ll scare them away.

Common Complaint: 4th Edition is too much like an MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game — ie. Worlds of Warcraft, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.)

My response: Yes, it does look a lot like MMORPGs — the feats and powers especially.I’m not sure why this is a problem.

Perhaps Wizards of the Coast intend to integrate the rules set into their own MMORPG. Maybe they’ll one day create an online experience that has some of the aspects pencil and paper gaming has that MMORPGs don’t.

Maybe they’re trying to capture some of the 11 million WOW players by modifying the system to something with which they are more familiar.

Common Complaint: 4th Edition skills checks removes the role-playing aspect of the game.

My Response: If this happens in your game, you need a new DM. GURPS had skill checks and contests of skills from day one. Someone wants to convince a Duke to help out the party? The rules say to make a diplomacy check (or maybe some others). I say, “You are standing before the Duke. Make your plea for help.” Then I’ll tell the player to respond to the Dukes questions and concerns. If he’s convincing, I’ll give give a big fat bonus to his roll.”

Now I’d like to give you my review

Good Points

1. 4th Edition is very well-written. It is written with no assumption that the reader has ever played D&D or knows anything about RPGs in general.
2. 4th Edition seems well-balanced. I’ve run a few single PC vs. same-level monster combats to get familiar with the combat system. In every case, the fights were very close — some PC victories, some not. Every time, the victor had very few HP left. So for a DM, coming up with balanced encounters should be a very simple task.
3. 4th Edition includes sound advice for playing a good game. The Dungeon Master’s Guide is a triumph. Just the information in Chapter 2, Running the Game, is worth the price of admission. It includes all of the things GMs learn over many hours of play. A beginning GM will be able to run a decent game if he or she takes the advice in this book to heart.
4. 4th Edition game mechanics are consistent. All rolls use the same, or very similar, standards. Higher is always better. Much of these changes have been around for 10 years, since the D20 system came about, but having only played the old AD&D, this is new to me. The mechanics are similar to Champions, where you have generic “powers” that are simply described differently. This means that the mechanics of playing a fighter or a wizard in combat are very similar, though the tactics may vary greatly.

Bad Points

1. Although the books are organized better than any previous editions I’ve played, there are still some problems. All of the combat rules should be in one place. It would be nice if things like the ability modifier used was included on the weapons table. There’s a lot of skipping around necessary to find all relevant rules. There was probably an editorial decision to not repeat rules, as having the same rule in more than one place can lead to inaccuracies, which will lead to contradictions. I also think a flowchart for the combat system would be useful, especially early on.
2. As the characters advance in level, there is a steady march to god-like power. This has kind of always been a problem with D&D. There is a constant escalation, a sort of arms race between the players and the DM. Here’s an excerpt that explains what I see as the problem
   

   In the epic tier, your character’s capabilities are truly superheroic. Your class still determines most of your abilities, but your most dramatic powers come from your choice of epic destiny, which you select at 21st level. You travel across nations in the blink of an eyes, your whole party might take to the air in combat. The success or failure of your adventures has far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions in this world and even planes beyond…

   Yeah. So basically, you go from a fantasy game to a superhero game. To me, this means you can’t run a campaign for years unless players retire their characters. Otherwise, the escalation of power will become ridiculous. I want my adventures to start in a tavern, not on Mount Olympus.

3. The God-damned DM Screen! Gaah! In keeping with the fine TSR tradition, the DM Screen contains some information the DM will use often and other information the DM will use rarely. This has always infuriated me.
   The DM Screen should make the game go faster, and the part of the game that consistently needs to go fast is combat. Why is there a monster experience chart on the DM Screen? If I’m looking at it, combat’s over. While everyone’s taking a breather, the DM can look up the XP. Why do I need a flippin’ tavern menu? WHY? Do I really need to know that a pitcher of ale costs 2 silver? What horrible thing (apart from the tavern gaining a reputation for being expensive) is going to happen if I charge the PCs 4 silver? How about including a little note about what triggers an opportunity attack, rather than sending me to page 290?
4. A one-page index? Really? In the old days, when typesetting consisted of moving wax coated slips of paper around on a layout board, I could see how coming up with an index would be rather tedious and time-consuming. But 4th Edition was written on a computer — I know this because I saw the .pdfs that Wizards sent to their printer on BitTorrent, registration marks and all. Making an index is an automated process now — most software is so good at it, it’s overkill. You can always edit out the 4000 entries for the word “the.”
   Here’s a shining example: the Player’s Handbook index doesn’t have an entry for the word “level!” What if I want to find the level chart after I’ve divied up experience? Oh, that’s right, it’s on the DM Screen, ’cause, you know, you might need to level in the heat of combat…

Don’t get me wrong, having perused the core books, I think the folks at Wizard of the Coast have done a fine job, making a set of rules that is easy to understand and in many ways intuitive. I just get a little carried away when I see the same problems that have existed for thirty years and four editions. But those problems are minor annoyances at best. The lack of an index will become unimportant once I’m more familiar with the rules. And I’ll tape over the crap that doesn’t belong on a DM Screen with the stuff they should have included — I’ve done it before.