James, that's totally wack! No disrespect to Gygax, whose "Role-Playing Mastery" has a linear, hierarchical diagram of the levels of mastery, with "contributions to and activity within the greater gaming community" as the highest ("Grand Mastery") - but in my experience, running convention games or otherwise being plugged into the D&D circuit is no guarantee that you're two whole levels more advanced than "play group excellence and mastery of the role of game master". If that were the case, I wouldn't have suffered through being a player in so many con games that made me want to scratch my eyes out! Sorry Gary, it just ain't all on the same scale. Many of the best DMs I've ever met had no interest whatsoever in the "greatest gaming community"; some of the professional RPG writers I know are no fun to play with, and wouldn't be able to come up with anything but Forgotten Realms novelizations if they had to compile a list of "Inspirational Source Material" (a sad contrast to the awesomeness of the Red Box's list).
Besides which, this site is the kind of achievement by an "individual understanding the needs of all his fellow enthusiasts and contributing toward their ongoing enjoyment of the pursuit" that Gygax would have found worthy of the Grand Mastery accolade.
IO, I have very mixed feelings about 4E. I lucked into being a playtester and so my first experiences were all shaped by having a semi-broken set of rules, a set of players who had a strong adherence to the 3E style of bending over backwards to accomodate AD&D traditions, and an approach to playing that emphasized finding faults over having fun. I started this 4E campaign to try to approach the game without those preconceptions. It's worked in part - I can definitely say that it is possible to have fun playing 4E with a group who wants to do so (instead of edition-warring), and some of the posts mearls have made display a thoughtfulness behind the design and a willingness to communicate about what it's trying to do that we were sorely lacking in the playtest period.
I've heard it said (e.g. by Keith Baker and Ari Marmell) that 4E feels more like the Red Box than any edition since. Having been inspired by this group to learn more about what that means (I too was a blue-box baby, and take it for granted in a way that the minor differences of Red Box helps me see past), I can see where that's coming from. AD&D and 3E are definitely on the side of a drive towards elaborateness for its own sake. It rouses my nerd rage that so much of what I hold dear was scrapped in 4E (our feedback about alignment was scathing) - but I have to admit that Red Box also doesn't have bards, or half-orcs, or a zillion other things that are part of the AD&D canon.
I recently picked up "Best of The Dragon #2," which has a bunch of essays Gygax wrote. One of them concerns the introduction of AD&D, and it's fascinating to see him saying some of the same things that pissed me off about the 4E marketing: It's a different game, accept it or play the old edition. Converting a campaign will require substantial work, and you're better off just starting a new one if you want to use the new rules. The particular needs of a massively multiplayer environment (tournament play back then, RPGA and MMO's nowadays) is a driving force behind the new edition's design.
Even if I accept that 4E is a different game, and acknowlege that it's not really a radical break from D&D tradition but a logical extension of some trends within that tradition, here are the things I have problems with:
- Emphasis of combat over roleplaying. Yes, it's true that there are probably many more pages devoted to "how to roleplay" in 4E than in Red Box. But Red Box is only 64 pages long - if you look at the percentage of words devoted to combat vs. "everything else," 4E's priorities seem hugely skewed. And Red Box gets a lot out of its rules - things like morale and reaction tables pack a ton of gaming implications into a very small space. 4E has advice for roleplaying, not rules - which makes "everything else" seem like fluff. (The skill challenge rules are promising, but the fact that they were added at the 11th hour is painfully obvious.) And the extreme crunchiness of combat means that about 75% of each one of our 4E sessions are typically devoted to a single fight. The rules-lightness of the old school meant that even if you still spent three-quarters of each game fighting, you could get through many different combats - which meant much more of the awesome parts of each one (building up to the conflict, dealing with the unique environment and the abilities of the particular foe, working out the consequences of the fight). 4E's combat is fun in a tactical skirmish-minis way, but there's increasingly a feeling of "gee, are we really still interested in fighting these same dudes two hours later?"
- Lack of creative adjucation. Yes, it's true that this is what Gygax said AD&D was meant to do - you could go to any tournament anywhere and everyone would agree on how to interpret the rules. But seriously, he must have been high. Much of the fun of the old-school (AD&D included) came from how ill-defined things were; you got these inspiringly unpredictable moments where you'd be like, "Hmm, what does happen when your reverse gravity spell interacts with my anti-magic field," and had to fall back on the idea of the game reality, the judgement of the DM, and the collective agreement of the group to keep the good times rolling. This situation *never* happens in 4E. The rules are pinned down to within an inch of their life, and trying to think about game reality causes problems instead of solving them. A good illustration is the command spell. OD&D: you say one word, which the target must obey. 3E: you say one word from the following list, and here's the limits on what might happen. 4E: the target is dazed, and you either knock them prone or push them 1 square. I have only one word to say about how lame that is, and although it could work as a command it doesn't appear on the 3E list :)
Here are the things I like about 4E:
- The underlying design is admirably smooth. New players do seem to pick it up easily; lots of things are streamlined in a way that combines Basic Set ease of play with 3E unifying mechanical principles; the DMG has guidelines for DIY that make it much easier than 3E (e.g. making a monster, figuring out how much damage an improvised stunt or trap does) even if the DIY spirit seems at odds with the "everything your wizard can possibly do with a spell is laid out right here" rigidity of the PHB.
- Monsters are fun to run as well as to create. They each have cool powers that make the enemy's turn in initiative something the DM really looks forward to.
- Ritual spellcasting is a cool idea - another of those old Gygax articles, in defense of Vancian spellcasting, talks about how much of the magic in fantasy literature is a lengthy affair unsuitable for the dungeon environment. Ritual magic is a great way to have that kind of stuff going on.
OK, rant over; I feel better now :)
James_Nostack 1216323055|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
