Warning! This post is for nerds only. Seriously. Most of my friends probably won't even understand what I'm talking about.
I have played roleplaying games for decades, though not continually. I started around junior high (7th grade?). I have played every edition of D&D from the basic red box through 4E, with the exception of 3.5. Within D&D, I have played in the settings of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Planescape, Oriental Adventures and Dragonlance. I've spent the most time in my life playing 2nd edition, and Planescape was my favorite setting. I have also played Boot Hill, Top Secret, James Bond, Middle Earth, Shadowrun, Marvel Super Heroes and Star Frontiers.
I am currently (and I use the term 'currently' loosely) running a campaign in 4E. It's very different from the other editions in mechanics, but has been enjoyable for the most part. It does a lot of things well, and introduces a tactical element that was mostly missing in previous editions, due to having to use grids and minis. Most of combat encounters involve being mindful of placement on the grid, controlling the field of battle, and the like. It's fun to involve actual tactics in combat, but it's also incredibly ponderous (and sometimes tedious). There's lots of things to keep up with, lots of options for each character and enemy to consider, and so a session of 6-8 hours really only gets you through an average of three encounters. That's too slow. And it has kept me from wanting to play, despite the fact that I like most of the rest of it. Granted, in the rules, it targets encounters at about an hour for each, but this is rarely obtainable (and still too slow).
So, they began playtesting for the 5th edition (currently coined D&DNext), so I thought I'd look at it. Before the playtest began, the game designers were asking lots of questions of their community, trying to gauge what players wanted and what they thought was crucial to the brand D&D. Let me also mention that like most of the rest of the internet, there are volatile and hyperbolic "edition wars", where people pursue mostly negative criticism of whatever they don't like about certain iterations of our hobby. These are some of the people that are now being questioned by the designers, and many I'm sure are checking out the playtest material with the intention of slagging it before we even know much about it. I say this as a preface, because I want it clear that I have enjoyed every edition of the game that I have played and I think that both the desingers of the current playtest and the hyper-critics alike have both gotten it wrong about what our hobby is and should be. And it doesn't bode well for a sustainable business model, I'm afraid.
So with D&DNext (which I'll call DDN for the rest of this), the promise is to create a game that pleases everyone, from old-school fans to fans of the most recent edition (which is where the biggest divide occurred), and from a business standpoint, to attract new players. That's a pretty tall order, and I'm not sure it's feasible, or even how they should be thinking of it. Regardless, from what I've seen so far, there are bits from each edition hodge-podged into this new version. But not really in a consistent manner. Like with every other edition, there are some things I like and others that I don't.
The new mechanics of advantage/disadvantage and the combat superiority for fighters are things that I like. I do not like that the template of how the combat superiority works isn't also used for the other classes. If you want to attract new players, why would you make a system where you have to learn different sets of rules that don't resemble each other at all depending on which type of character you'd like to play? Were I designing, I would eliminate classes altogether, create rules for creating a general character, and then let the options that you get for creating a character (and for gaining new levels) be spent to build whatever kind of character you'd like to have.
Instead of creating a fighter, you'd create a character that could spend all their options on combat maneuvers or styles. If a player wanted to stick to the traditional version of what a fighter was in previous editions, then they'd only spend their options in this area. But if someone wanted to flavor it differently, then they could spend some of their options in different skills or magical or divine abilities. Likewise, if a person wanted to play the traditional wizard, they could focus on magical abilities; but if someone wanted to do something else, then they could by sacrificing magical ability for a few combat abilities or skills like sneaking and lockpicking. Classes have always been a part of D&D, but this is one of the things that has been mistaken for what is essential to the feel of D&D. Multi and dual classing has always been a clunky mechanic in every edition (and quite honestly, hybrids in 4E are next to worthless).
It would be easy for the new edition to tackle this by using the combat superiority mechanic and applying it to spells and skills as well. Stop worrying about having things that "make a fighter different from other classes" or "what makes a wizard a wizard" and just set up a mechanic for the game and let players and DMs decide what their characters are going to be. Part of this baggage comes from balance issues in the previous editions--older editions favored magic-wielding classes as you leveled up and fighters were kind of boring to play (at least so sayeth the critics); whereas in 4E, the martial characters have just as many options throughout their career (which is one of the things 4E got right) and in my opinion, wizards are kind of a drag compared to other magic-users, but necessary for a party to survive.
Instead, we are again chained to classes, as if it makes sense what a cleric or an assassin is as a RPG Platonic idea instead of merely a profession or background. Clerics, in and of themselves, are boring, and often just a necassary evil (metaphorically) because a party needs someone to heal them during and between fights. How is this fun or interesting for the player saddled with the cleric? If people have to play an uninteresting character because they need someone to heal their party, then the mechanics are off. 4E addressed a lot of this issue pretty well, although I'd argue that clerics are still pretty boring. What if, instead of some cliche heal-bot, players could create the type of character they wanted using the method above, and instead just flavor it with adherence to a deity or domain? Why do we need a paladin class instead of just creating a character that is primarily combat based with touches of divine abilities or a priestly background? Let a character choose a focus on divine powers if they want to simulate the cleric, but leaving options open helps the end result be more interesting. And don't get me started on the assassin. Any type of character can be an assassin, because that is a profession; something you do for money--why is it always shackled to being a subclass of the thief or rogue? It you want a darker character, flavor it with darkness through your options, background and the way you play, don't make people have to choose a specific and generic class to do so.
So, how would this look? A standard progression table for leveling for every character. Gaining options, feats, skills, whatever you want to call them at the same rate. Let players use those options however they want to choose between combat maneuvers, skills, arcane abilities and divine abilities. Segregate arcane abilities into magic schools (illusion, necromancy, etc.) and divine abilities into domains (sun, death, luck, etc.). And this still leaves room to add something new later, like psionics, that could use the same mechanics template, just with a new segregation of abilities from which to choose. And here's the most important part: players and DMs need to work together to create backgounds and stories for their characters. This is what flavors the character more than any mechanics will ever do. This is what should influence how the character acts during an adventure instead of looking for ways to maximize the math and use their abilities.
So, really, I didn't spend too much time even talking about the DDN playtest material. And that's because, while I see a few promising ideas, I don't see what I'm looking for, and I certainly don't see any consistency with the set of rules as presented. Like I said before, I have played every version of this except 3.5, and more importantly, I have purchased almost every book for those older editions. I am not going to do so again, not without having a really good reason. I'm not seeing anything yet that I haven't already seen, so why do I need to invest in a new system? If the company is smart, then I am not really the target audience for a new edition (and neither are any of the rest of the current gamers out there). And here's the problem that both the designers and the current players seem to be overlooking.
For a sustainable business model, they need growth, not just the continued patronage of an ever-fracturing client base. To do that, they have to compete with all the other sources of entertainment out there. And yet they need our help because no one gets into a game like this on their own. I had purchased books as a kid because I loved monsters and mythology, but it was another gamer that taught me how to play. And that branches out. I seriously doubt many groups of people that have never played an RPG before decide to sit down and start without having at least one gamer already in the group. But it's also a niche hobby. It's complex and largely imaginative. And this is what baffles me about some of the complaining you can see on internet forums from current gamers.
Many seem to want the developers to create some sort of perfect game system where they don't have to do any work or use their own imagination. I wonder why these type of people even play RPGs. We always house-ruled in or out various pieces that we wanted or didn't want. We let play flow from within the different settings (both Spelljammer and Planescape offered easy solutions for travel between the various settings). Even now, those worlds are connected in my campaigns. I allow characters from Eberron and Athas to be in the same party. Why? Because it's interesting, but ultimately, if that is what a player wants to do, then the DMs answer should be yes. That doesn't mean I never say no or disallow certain things. That's part of the DMs job. But many of the loud voices now seem to think that a non-experienced DM should be able to have a fantastic adventure for a group of non-experienced players because the designers should have a perfect set of elegant rules that tell them how to do everything. And that's never been my experience in almost three decades of gaming. What is D&D? It's not the mechanics that define it. It's the epic storytelling, that is collaborative between the DM and the players. It is exciting adventures and danger and the wonder of discovery. And quite honestly, good DMs are rare. The rules don't matter as much as the willingness of the people playing the game.
And so, where are the developers going wrong? Well, first by catering too much to the naysaying crowd. Criticism is not constructive if you can't do it in a civil manner and maybe even offer up some solutions or ideas yourself. People are really ugly about 4E (and I get the sense that many of the current developers are in this group). 4E does a lot of things right and rolling back to earlier editions off which to base DDN seems like a step backwards. After all, if I want to play an older edition, I still have all that stuff. I don't need to buy DDN because I can still play 2nd or 3rd (or Pathfinder).
Secondly, by continuing to simply reskin the things we have already seen in an effort to make us all re-purchase product from them. This is why I stopped playing Magic the Gathering, by the way (interestingly, WotC owns both D&D and Magic, and is in turn, owned by Hasbro--it hasn't always been this way). It's a great strategy card game, but if you don't keep pumping money into it to buy the new releases, you end up getting stomped by players that do. Kind of associated with this mentality of 'out with the old, in with the new' is the lack of support for older editions. I understand they might not want to expend their design manpower on physical books for older editions, but they could at least continue to create adventure modules. Besides, everything now for older editions could be done digitally as pdfs, with very little production costs involved. A recent announcement stated that they were going to offer older books this way, and that's a step in the right direction. The other major flaw in this is support for electronic tools. 3rd edition promised to offer electronic tools for PC creation and DM tools, but never really fulfilled that promise with finished product. 4E had some really great electronic tools, but again, failed to finish any of them or keep them updated with their latest physical releases. And as a final point on this--piracy is not my problem, so don't make it my problem by forcing DRM or some other lame attempt at protection. It doesn't work in the music, movie or video game industries, and it's not going to work for RPGs. If I buy something, it's mine. Period. People are always going to find a way to pirate it and you're just going to have to live with that. That, and find positive ways to encourage people to spend their money on your product (and I have an idea for that below).
Next, one of the things that was better about the older editions was the sheer amount of adventures they produced. I know I said above that the DMs and players imagination was the better investment, but by simply having more and better modules, this would help solve the newbie problem. A well designed, interesting and exciting adventure module is not only good for playthrough, but it's also good for a burgeoning DM to see how such an adventure is designed. Then, when they get tired of pre-built or are ready to create their own material, they have a template of success and it's not as much of a crap shoot. 4E made a lot of really bold design changes, and many of them were successful. Content-wise, however, we just got reskins of Forgotten Realms, Eberron and Dark Sun. Other settings were forgotten. And the adventures are L.A.M.E. Somewhere along the line, there was a manager-type that looked at the numbers and said, "We don't make money on adventure modules because a group of players will only buy one per group and share it, whereas they will buy five or six Player's Handbooks." That might have even been true at the time. But it certainly couldn't have been true when TSR owned it judging by the sheer amount of modules produced for Advanced D&D and 2nd edition. And we also don't live in that world anymore where a group of players each buys their own Player's Handbook either. In fact, with 4E, a group really only needs the Rules Compendium and a handful of DM and monster books, grids, minis and dice. We simply don't need all the splat books that get produced afterwards, which give everyone more options that should have been included in the first set but also helps create game bloat. But a company has to sell their product, and as consumers, we get charmed into wanting something new. Then, for some strange reason during 4E, a game that requires minis to play, they discontinued their minis production (they were also extremely ugly--we purchased metal minis from Reaper instead). There map/tiles selection was laughable (and not physically big enough). Here's my solution:
Start producing adventure modules again. Good ones. Where are the Against the Giants, Queen of the Spiders, Tomb of Horrors, Temples of Elemental Evils, White Plume Mountains, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Ravenlofts, Dragons of whatever (the Dragonlance modules were each titled with a different version), or anything as epic as the Planescape stuff? What makes D&D what it is? These! It's not mechanics. It's when your halfling thief is separated from his party and Strod has him cornered on a balcony and he decides that it's better to jump off the balcony than face the vampire alone. It's when Tanis and his party are trying to get to the levels hundreds of feet below, with gully dwarves underfoot and draconians leaping off the floor above to land in the giant bucket-on-a-chain-and-pulley elevator to send it rocking precariously while they fight. It's when, after discovering the dungeon is so dangerous, a formely good party shows their true colors by forcing the halfing thief (a different one) to walk 30 feet ahead of the rest of the party, tied to a rope so they can try to pull him out of any pit traps he sets off (that halfling was destroyed, by the way, when he was forced to crawl through the mouth of the bas relief demon's head which contained a Sphere of Annihilation). It's when Drizzt and Wulfgar, with gleeful abandon, charge into a cave full of marauding giants to slaughter. It's when, instead of returning the magic weapons they'd been asked to retrieve as the basis for the adventure, the assassin decides he'd rather keep Blackrazor for himself. This, along with the flavor of the specific settings and certain monsters like beholders or mind flayers, is what D&D feels like to me. It doesn't have anything to do with the mechanics of the game. The Dragonlance novels were created due to what happened when the authors played through the adventures, not vice versa. And that first trilogy is one of the best fantasy trilogies ever written.
And that's another way in. Through novels. A good novel will make people want to play. Re-reading that Dragonlance trilogy convinced me to go buy a 4E Player's Handbook after not having played in years. D&D has a couple of other great trilogies of novels under their belt. It's well past time to retire Drizzt, but those first six books are classic. Paul Kemp's Cale and Riven had some pretty epic stories. I haven't read much of the new guard, but of what I've read, it's just not as good as the older novels. In fact, there's very little I've even been interested enough to pick up. Part of that, is that those older writers didn't care what the mechanics of the game were (and they certainly didn't write the mechanics of the game into the story itself). They didn't care what stats their characters had (in fact, every attempt to stat those classic characters in game terms has failed miserably). They just created epic heroes (and villains) and put them in epic situations. The game needs to reflect this. And also keep in mind that we now live in a post-Game of Thrones world. Those books make most other fantasy look positively juvenile in comparison.
If they produced good adventure modules again, they could offer pdfs for sale electronically at little production cost. If they wanted to help combat piracy by giving people a reason to actually purchase a physical product, then they could sell a Collector's Edition that not only included a physical booklet with the adventure and nice artwork, but also maps big enough to play on and either tokens or minis for every monster or enemy encountered in the module. As far as I know, there's not a way to pirate minis yet. Now they'd have a product that wasn't just a slapped together adventure. They'd have an event that a group would likely want to take part in (as long as the content matched the physical items). If that's too cost-prohibitive, then simply open up the gaming license to become a Creative Commons project where third party developers create modules, hosted and offered for sale by the company and offer a 50/50 split with the creator of the module. This is what much of the competition is doing, by the way.
I probably come off a bit as one of those longing-for-the-good-old-days type of gamer. I'm not. Some of that is likely the nostalgia of my youth. I do think that over time, companies lose what made them passionate about creating a product and start to worry too much about what other people think and the profit margin associated with it. Ultimately, I'd like to play a game that recaptures some of that passion, but is simple enough that I don't have to crush all my adult relationships in order to play. Unfortuantely for the RPG industry, I don't really see a good outcome for a large production company. Players that love to play the game because of the imagination factor already have everything they need, and it's unlikely the company will produce something better (just looking around on people's blogs, some of which are linked under Nerd Stuff on my own blog, I often see material better than what WotC puts out). For the players that complain about what is wrong with the game, it's unlikely the company will produce something that makes them happy (because they have a problem). From a purely business perspective, they have to gain new players. It's certainly not going to produce a 'game for everyone'. I don't envy them their position, but I love the game and so maybe someone will read what I wrote and try to implement my ideas that I listed above.
My conclusion. Unless I see something really cool and different, I'm out. I will use what I already have. I'll rack my brain to try to make 4E more efficient and faster, leaner. If I can't then I'll simply roll back to 2nd or 3rd. I may even eventually rip out pieces of DDN and implement my own ideas to create a whole new system (but probably not). Really, if I'm going to play, I'd rather spend my time trying to come up with something that comes close to some of those epic adventures I still remember.
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