Modularity and the “narrowing” of D&D

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Hello. I’m de-lurking for a bit to get your opinions on an issue I am concerned about, which seems to be hinted about more and more in 4e.

The following quotes are from the EN world homepage (originally from other pages), and Wotc's Dnd page:

3. Every class gets cool "non-attack" power choices as well as attack power choices. Wizards will still be able to cast spells such as Disguise Self, Jump, or Levitate. It's true that we'd like to "narrow" wizards a bit, and save (for example) some illusion spells for an honest-to-gosh Illusionist class down the road, or necromancy spells for a Necromancer. But wizards will still "splash" at least a few of the iconic powers in these themes of magic. For example, wizards still have Invisibility available to them. But when the Illusionist class comes around, he'll have better Invisibility options.

Also, plenty of monsters will be in MM1, but not alll the monsters you expect to see in D&D will be. Those that have a home in the new edition will eventually see release, however. Sometimes they'll even get a polish that makes them into something more useful and compelling, and maybe even more mythologically accurate.

Time: 2:27 James Wyatt: “So, there are some monster that I very intentionally left out of this book (In reference to the 4e MM 1). So that when they appear in Monster Manual 2, they’ll help communicate ‘Hey look, this is a core Monster Manual. You don’t have Frost Giants if you don’t have Monster Manual M.’”

Those two passages and the podcast, coupled with the knowledge of the gnome not being included in the 4e phb 1 makes their business plan quite obvious in my view. It seems that they are dividing up iconic elements of D&D into different sequential core books so players and Dms will be inclined to buy more books.

With this setup it seems that the mantra of 3e’s “more options” will be absent from the first (PHB 1, MM 1, DMG 1) 4e core rulebooks. I’m concerned that there will be numerous iconic core 3e characters and monsters (like the illusionist, necromancer, and Frost Giant) not available in 4e core issue #1. It is explicitly mentioned in the podcast that core will be applied to multiple phbs, MMs, and dmgs.

If this is true, then players and Dms seeking to transfer to 4e might have to wait months (or years) after the release of the first PHB/MM/DMG until their favorite 3e core elements are supplied in the 4e ruleset. This disturbs me.

What are your thoughts, comments, and ideas on this issue? What other effects do you see likely to take place?

[JonSetanta]

Argrgrgrgbrlrbggbbl not more 4e! That's my opinion.

[Leress]

I listened to the podcast...I wasn't really angered, more annoyed. When they were talking about how they were redesigning some of the monsters (like gnolls using pack tactics), all I could thinks was "I do that anyway" Bugbears are like Roman Legionnaires.

Then the annoying part was during the rapid fire challenge of making encounters.
12-level encounter ghost controller, human fighter death knight, rune carved eidilon (ghostwalk name)

8th level A were wolf with an owl bear with a satyr piper, quickling runner. The fey and werewolf follow the owl bear around as an opportunistic enemy but the owl bear doesn't know about them doing that.

3rd level caravan -young white dragon or hobgoblin solider, hobgoblin archer, hobgoblin hexer

15 level in dispator's fortress- 4 legion devil minions, bone devil (controller), eye of flame.

Why this is annoying to me is that they pretty much self glorifying their shit before it is even out. Hell the times that took to put them together is as fast as I can. They say that monster will have "limited abilities" ala attacking and what not and "limited" ones like the dragons breath. The dragon has a tail swipe that is an immediate action if someone gets into flanking position. They also say that monsters are easier to run...there are really no examples of that in this podcast.

They seem to be trying to extend the life of using monsters. They are trying to make it so you can fight a large number of enemies and still be a noticeable threat since apparently they numbers go up to be able to hit you...unlike most fantasies I've read where peons fall like bowling pins.

They did improve the dryad by making it do something like a tree jump like a shadowdancer does with shadows.

My opinion of 4e is still the same...wait until it comes out to see what happened.

[Judging__Eagle]

Wait and see.

They have to show us examples of actual game play for us to get an idea for what it will be like.

That's actually what they should do. Show a video of actual game-play footage completely unedited to 'save time'.

I want to see how much time they save.

[K]

As far as I can tell, 4e is allow about:

A. Selling more product. This means encounters are supposed to look like a DnD Minis fight with random match-up monsters with no theme and cardgame-esque rule conventions. This also means that since marketing has told them that the Core books outsold 90% of their products combined, they need to spread out the Core book material as much as possible.

B. Making DnD look more like White Wolf. As one of the only real competitors, they want to eat up everything.

C. Changing the rules to make it look different from 3e. This is not a great idea, since a lot of things from 3e work well.


Basically, this is what you get with no playtesting.

Sure, a Necromancer is supposed to better at necromancy than a Wizard. But, rather than do something fun like give Necromancers a necromantic theme and mechanic to their Wizard spells, they are going just give them a different spell list.

For example, a Necromancer could use the basic Wizard chassis but:

a. Every Conjuration spell they use can only summon Undead.
Transmutation: Can turn you into an undead, and can't turn you into a living creature.
Evocation: Does negative energy damage and not elemental.
Enchantment: Can affect undead.
Illusion: No change.
Necromancy: +2 DC and double duration.
Abjuration: -4 Caster level v undead
Divination: No change.


Every Abjuration

[Voss]

A) I don't know about that. There is a lot of room for themed encounters as well. The crap wossname pulled out of his ass wasn't exactly inspiring, but nothing suggests that you have to do it that way. (Any more than you had to do first edition adventurers as the grab-bag of random encounters that they featured).

B). There are some common themes in the myths that both are pulling from, but, White Wolf, a competitor? Does their shit even really sell anymore?

C) and a lot of 3E works badly.

As for your necromancer example... Well, thats a lot of supposition, but personally I would love a Necromancer that is actually a Necromancer, rather than a Wizard who can't cast a handful of spells that are vaguely themed together in order to cast some extra Wizard spells that are vaguely themed together in a different way.

[RandomCasualty]

1191624981[/unixtime]]

That's actually what they should do. Show a video of actual game-play footage completely unedited to 'save time'.

Yeah. Though then we'd see it's nothing special and not buy it. They can build hype by slowly trying to spoon feed us spoilers without ever actually telling us much about how the mechanics work.

[CalibronXXX]

I don't know about you guys, but I stopped caring about 4E a while ago.

[Voss]

I'm dissatisfied enough with Third that I want something else. Something more than the RPG of the week that, you know, people actually play.

[Username17]

I don't think they know how the mechanics work. I mean they were throwing around that whole thing about using wands, staves, orbs, and tomes. Now maybe someone reminded them that whoever came up with that idea had been playing enough WoW that they could potentially be sued by Blizzard. Maybe they just figured out that they had too much crap. But they revised the teaser to have three items in it.

And that doesn't fill me with confidence. Basically it sounds like they have settled on a "marketting strategy" but they haven't settled on a core game mechanic. I don't give a damn what the marketting strategy is. Strategies that involve me having to purchase more hard bound books are unfortunate, but it doesn't really matter. It's so much more expensive to play XBOX games per hour than it is to play RPGs with friends that $60 one way or another matters not in the big picture.

But if they don't know what the core mechanics are at this point they really don't know whether they are any good. But I actually do know. If they don't know what the game mechanics are, the mechanics are bad. Definitionally. We play a game instead of just making shit up in order to have common ground for cooperative storytelling. If the rules are more exceptions than standards, then there really isn't common ground.

And that's bad.

-Username17

[K]

Mostly, I'm tired of different kinds of magic. Honestly.

I already have a basic knowledge of thousands of spells for 3e. Considering that 95% of those aren't spells I'd use, and 4% are spell that are only useful for very specific circumstances (Guards and Wards), the game would be better off if we had a system where the flavor was wildly mutable, but the mechanics were unified.

For example, we could just say that Clerics get positive energy and divine damage effects, and don't get illusions or transmutations. Otherwise, they'd have the same spell lists.

Or each classes could have a set spell list of 10 spells per level, and other spells would be PrC features (Loremaster might add Divination spells that would go nicely with an Evoker or Necromancer) or feats (Way of the Frozen Heart could add ice magic to a ice-themed Enchantress or a Cleric living in the arctic tundra, perhaps by requiring that you are in a cold environmment or be holding/wearing a large chunk of ice).

[Voss]

1191632540[/unixtime]]I don't think they know how the mechanics work. I mean they were throwing around that whole thing about using wands, staves, orbs, and tomes. Now maybe someone reminded them that whoever came up with that idea had been playing enough WoW that they could potentially be sued by Blizzard. Maybe they just figured out that they had too much crap. But they revised the teaser to have three items in it.
-Username17

Or, as is more likely, some idiot web monkey put up an old version of the wizard implements (because an absent minded game designer sent him the wrong document), and it was replaced with the current version when they got back in the office.

[CalibronXXX]

1191632595[/unixtime]]Mostly, I'm tired of different kinds of magic. Honestly.

I already have a basic knowledge of thousands of spells for 3e. Considering that 95% of those aren't spells I'd use, and 4% are spell that are only useful for very specific circumstances (Guards and Wards), the game would be better off if we had a system where the flavor was wildly mutable, but the mechanics were unified.

That's what we're trying to do over here. I know you don't have a lot of time for game designing right now, but if you're interested, your two cents would be greatly appreciated.

[ckafrica]

As for your necromancer example... Well, thats a lot of supposition, but personally I would love a Necromancer that is actually a Necromancer, rather than a Wizard who can't cast a handful of spells that are vaguely themed together in order to cast some extra Wizard spells that are vaguely themed together in a different way.

I realize I might get run out on a rail for suggesting this but what about how they do it with the Psion where all psions have access to a communal list but then there are some special powers available only to their specialty. That way a necromancer would have stuff that would actually make them different other than having their spell DCs going up by one and an extra spell.

As for this whole 4E nonsense. I figure wait till it comes out, and if it isn't better, see if any mechanics are salvageable to blend back into 3.5e making our own 3.75e which we then publish on OGL of both 4e and 3e

[JonSetanta]

Hey it's K!

Calibron: agreed.

[Crissa]

I don't buy that 'cheaper' thing. At this point... Is playing D&D going to be cheaper?

...For 4e, they want you, and every player, to not only have to buy a book, but to have a paid account.

XBox games are an XBox + HDTV + game + broadband service. So in the short run, this is far more expensive.

However, there's more televisions in the US than there are cars, and there's more cars than people. Broadband access is low, but most out industrialized countries have higher.

Given that the pool of their target audience already has these things...

Paying $15/mo for Warcraft + one edition every two years. I can play any time of day or night, there's always a server up, and even when there isn't a 'group' to play with, there's something to do.

Per hour, for investment, that's damn cheap entertainment. And they happily make a version for every hardware.

And they want me to buy three books a year, my DM (+whoever) pay for their web enhancements, for maybe a couple hours of game every week? And what about open source gaming? That's our off-hours entertainment.

Per table time, they're really looking at shooting themselves in the foot.

-Crissa

[rapanui]

Not to mention, the good video games are fun almost 100% of the time, take 0 prep work, and don't require the presence of other beings (coordinating schedules can be a bitch).

So, yeah. Long live video games (but fuck Microsoft).

[tzor]

I stopped caring about 4E a long time ago as well, but that was mostly due to the hype around 4E and not 4E itself. Generally speaking I can say as a matter of absolute fact that 4E will not be presented in the best possible light; it's playtesting will be too narrwoly focused to note obvious problems intitutively obvious to a casual observer (but not the origial core playtesters/designers) and everyone will hate it.

Why? Because that is how everyone does every edition. Shit hits the fan, and the writers compartmentalize to get things done in time that they are all wearing blinders that obscure the obvious in the corner of their fields of vision.

Simply put there is no such thing as a standard cross edition core. Half Orcs and Assassins were dropped in 2E without any regret. Illusionists were dropped in 3E without a single tear shed. In 4E I get the impression, "the stuff we really want to do first is comming out first and then the stuff we want to do next will come out later." This is much different from previous editions and while I can see the market guys salivating, It's a lot better than just dropping them out semi forever until a non core supplment brings them back.

When all is said and done I will wait until I get my hands on the real product before I decide anything. 4E could really be the gaming edition of the Edsel (which was, from what I was told a pretty good car ... it just was too radical in various design principles for the buyers of cars). On the other hand it could be the gaming edition of the Prius (4E is so efficient and it saves us so much work it actually reduces global warming).

All I really want to know is what is really going to be in CORE I, because my 2008 Gen Con costume will probably have to be 4E compliant to score big.

[PhoneLobster]

Why? Because that is how everyone does every edition.

I was seriously impressed with 3rd edition. It wasn't perfect but there were SO MANY things it did that I had been wanting to see for years.

It brought me back out of the wilderness of pure homebrew that I went into rather than play 2nd ed, and into mainstream D&D again.

The worst I had to say about it, at the time, was that it didn't do EVERYTHING I wanted it to.

I'm already stepping up my homebrew projects in anticipation of what I expect from 4th ed.

[Crissa]

Only third edition had the selling power and game-producing power of version.

If you don't recall, they were still selling AD&D (not second) at the same time as they were retiring AD&D 2nd settings - and those had really good sales records, for gaming products.

Honestly, the lack of breadth in the 3.5 settings is probably one of the killers of 4th - they seem to be doing so many contradictory things - adding complexity to make it simpler, making more numbers to add together and longer to resolve rounds rather than shorter to make them... shorter. And throwing away the base setting to make... A new base setting.

Instead of making a new core system, they should probably focus on the best sellers of the last two editions: the box-set paradigm of the late 80s and the core open source rules - make the core books over and over again with different settings while fine tuning one set of rules.

I don't have their numbers, but I do have the ones that we had from the store - and Monster Manuals and Options Books did sell - but never as much each as all-in-one books like the Rokugon setting books.

-Crissa