It’s as good an RPG as could have been designed by a corporation. It’s good that Marketing had a seat at the design meetings. It’s bad that the seat was at the head of the table and everybody else was just there to take their orders.
There’s a psychological element to the dislike of this game that isn’t fair, but if WOTC didn’t want enemies then they shouldn’t have made them. I’ll start with the two worst issues.
They cancelled Dragon and Dungeon to create a monthly online service. Like it or not, ready or not, Internet subscriptions are poised to gut the newsstand. The loss of these printed magazines was like losing an old friend, but the community can still gather around the D&D website, I guess. The worst aspect of this for WOTC was turning their best asset, Paizo, into their biggest competitor.
Dishonesty about 4e was the bigger problem. Even when everyone knew they were working on the new edition, they denied it to keep 3.5 sales going. How bad did Paizo make WOTC look as their Pathfinder playtest was open and public, while 4e test players were under non-disclosure agreements? This has left a lingering bad taste in my mouth.
It was designed to be a collectible miniatures game, some hellish cross between chess, backgammon, and Pokemon. It’s also been designed to be incompatible with all previous versions. So, shell out for the minis and hope you get what you want in the booster packs, and you may as well throw out all your old books and adventures and buy new ones. At least, that’s what WOTC hopes you’ll do. Like I said, marketing ruled the creation of this game, not game designers.
I’ll throw in my tacky, nit-pick game issues. The ones that I know of, that is.
-Treasure parcels: Allowing the players to pick their treasure? How on earth did this rule get in there? That doesn’t even happen online.
-Skill challenges: From what little I understand of this procedure, I don’t understand it. I have heard the same from people who play the game.
-Traps: Somehow, what got slimmed down on monster stat block, got added to the trap stat blocks.
-Saving Throw continuing conditions: From what I’ve read, this is one of those things that adds needless complexity to the game. The same thing goes for monsters’ power recharge rolls.
-Immediate Interrupts: I think this rule actually goes back to 3e. Whatever. It reminds me of Attacks of Opportunity and other such nonsense. Look, when it’s my turn in a combat round, it’s MY turn.
-Character death: 4e players may actually have to willfully want their character to die in order to make it happen. Meanwhile in a harsh Old School environment, every dungeon is “Tomb of Horrors” to a low-level character. Is there a possibility of finding a happy medium? I wonder how a player with only 4e experience would react to any other RPG, especially games where characters can actually die suddenly.
Perhaps 4e’s worst sin is that it seems to have delineated all the rules so thoroughly. The ragged gray, improvisational edge that all RPG’s live in when played in the wild, has been erased. I think this was supposed to help shield players and DM’s from bad playing experiences from arguing over the rules (like an online game). They missed the point. Much like children playing Cowboys and Indians, the arguing was an integral part of the game. The participants shape the rules. This is stated or implied in most RPG’s.
If the intention of “hard” rules was to have less arguing and more role-playing, it may have only half succeeded. 4e players seem to tend to metagame more with concrete rules, looking for every advantage that the rules allow. Finding the best method to crack an encounter is the focus, just like a video game. Ironically, this actually sounds Old School, challenge the player, not the character. But rather than using creativity and logic in a situation, it’s a matter of finding the best combo move with the dice. Like good chess and monopoly players, experienced 4e players will be easy to spot in a game. Again, not too much different from some Old School players and DM’s, who end up in some kind of “Spy vs. Spy” mentality with tricks, traps, and raiding dungeon rooms.
The bigger question may be how close are WOW and D&D’s virtual tabletop getting to replicating the in-person D&D experience? As WOTC has made D&D more like a video game that difference has eroded significantly. I have to believe that the next version of D&D will get them out of the publishing business altogether and into an online subscription model. The only question in my mind is when. At least at that point, the grognard/retro clone movement wins, however Pyrrhic the victory.
All is not lost. While many long-time gamers have embraced 4e, the target audience of this edition was new players, specifically collectible card players and online gamers. There are several nods to WOW to make the game seem very familiar, including rules for games without a referee. With the combat rules having easy analogues to the computer game, the in-person RPG opens up whole new dimensions for these players. Gabe from Penny Arcade seems like the perfect conversion story. The old-timers, meanwhile, like to have a new set of rules to play with and break, I suppose. D&D may be coming back around to its roots, away from character drama, huge settings, and adventure paths, and this is the perfect system for dungeon hacking.
Given its prop-driven nature, 4e seems like it would be hard to improv and role-play, but the RP in face-to-face RPG apparently can’t be suppressed. Check out this quote from Gabe:
“We went from basically playing a board game with dice and minis to something much more interesting. It's just been awesome to watch them go from being a little embarrassed to be playing D&D and not wanting to look stupid to really to embracing their characters. I've got a friend who plays a Dragonborn and is actually speaking Draconic at the table…”
Now that sounds like D&D.
J.
Source:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/3/4/
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