Geekiness Ahoy!
I know lots of criticisms have been fielded against the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons (which claims to be the fourth edition of the game but truth be told everyone's lost count of the editions at this point). Many criticisms, most of them valid, have been raised against the game, but I still like it. Oh, and as for the criticism that "It's not Dungeons and Dragons any more!", I'd just like to say that anyone who tries to pull that one needs to re-educate themselves on terms like copyrights and product identity and also stop taking this game so seriously. It's a game where people pretend to be dwarves and elves and wizards, okay?
The game's combat system has been cleaned up, which is a good thing. The classes have been more strictly tied into their specific niches, sometimes at the cost of suspension of disbelief, (i.e. Rangers are the only ones capable of two-weapon combat, Rogues can't sneak attack with bows, etc.) but I can easily live with these changes since I've always been rather skeptical of claims that D&D is in any way a simulation of a fantasy reality. I've always thought of D&D as quite a gamist exercise and it's always been good at that. If I want a more simulationist experience, I'll have WFRP to go to, since it provides a perfect simulation of at least one kind of a fantasy reality.
At the cost of dropping the simulationist mantle we've lost a couple of skills, namely Craft, Perform and Profession. I accept this choice, because these were niche skills to begin with: Craft was only good if you wanted to specialize in making your own magical items (and even then the Craft rules were rather arcane so you might've been better off just buying the item you wanted to enchant), Perform was of real substance for Bards only (unless you wanted to spend your downtime gaining a bit of extra coin) and Profession had no real use except for some really obscure Prestige Classes and gaining extra coin during downtime. Also, having said that Perform was only of use for Bards, I found it rather insulting that if I wanted to play a Bard I'd actually have to provide my own skill points for learning the Perform skill. This was effectively forcing players to spend some of their precious resources on actually getting the most out of their character class, which is not a design philosophy I agree with.
Problem is, removing these skills has lead some people into criticising the game for removing yet another great way of adding depth to a character, for surely Peter the Fighter is a much deeper character than Tom the Fighter simply because Peter spent some of his skill points on Profession (Farmhand). I'm simply of the opinion that if you need system support for playing a character with a memorable personality you might not have your priorities straight.
Another critique fielded against the removal of these non-combat skills is that it turns the game into pure hack 'n' slash. Well, leaving aside the facts of 4e finally fixing Diplomacy so that it doesn't have the potential of breaking the game at 5th level, a number of utility powers that are applicable in non-combat situations and a skill challenge system which actually makes non-combat encounters much more interesting and vibrant, isn't hack 'n' slash what this game, at its heart, is really about? Okay, the very first iteration of D&D was more about running around in some subterranean fantasy fucking Vietnam with a handful of hit points and always under the threat of death, but in the end D&D has always boiled down to killing monsters and taking their stuff!
The last critique, which I find completely valid, is the slaughtering of sacred cows to fit into the new setting assumptions. It is absolutely true that the setting has been changed, but personally I am not bothered by it, probably because I never made such an emotional investment into the D&D setting. In some ways I prefer the old setting assumptions, but in other ways the new setting just screams "Awesome!" like an undead dinosaur with laser gatling guns mounted on its back (the dinosaur is probably pissing heroin too) and I much prefer the morally ambiguous nature of the planes over the colour-coded planes of the Great Wheel setting. (The Great Wheel is a great setting for Planescape, which ran with all the assumptions that came with it, but for some other worlds it wasn't such a great fit. Probably explains why Eberron went with its own, much more distant and interesting planar arrangement.)
Of course, when one of the setting assumptions that has changed is that magic-users are more powerful than purely mundane characters I can see some people cringing. While I understand that magic being the most powerful force in the multiverse makes sense storywise, it doesn't work that way in a game which is supposed to be a group activity. It's not fun when everyone else has to play the Wizard's/Cleric's/Druid's and his animal companion's sidekicks. One could always counter by saying that these problems only exist at the higher levels of the game, but it doesn't exactly solve the problem. I'd rather play a game which has a modicum of balance at all levels of play rather than a game which I can't play at high levels because it'll turn into rocket launcher tag for the spellcasters. Besides, I'd rather have my martial character become more like Beowulf, Hercules or Cuchulain at high levels than them being "the guy who's just really, really good at swinging his sword".
Now for the required disclaimers: me liking 4e doesn't mean that I hate 3e. 3e provided me with some of the most fun RPG experiences in my entire life and it still has its own place in my heart. I will not stop playing 3e, mainly because I've still got so many character concepts that I'd like to try in it which do not yet map into 4e that well, but also because many of my friends have made such an investment into the game that it'd be nothing short of rude of me to demand them to switch into a game they might not enjoy as much.
In other news, I've already started running a campaign of 4e for a bunch of friends who seem to be enjoying it. Some of these people are complete noobs to the game and seeing them come up with characters was an extremely heart-warming exercise. It's quite something to see a grown man pick up the Player's Handbook and exclaim "Can I play one of these guys?" at the sight of Dragonborn and then having them exclaim "Cool, I can play a Paladin!" after reading the short blurb on them.
The game's combat system has been cleaned up, which is a good thing. The classes have been more strictly tied into their specific niches, sometimes at the cost of suspension of disbelief, (i.e. Rangers are the only ones capable of two-weapon combat, Rogues can't sneak attack with bows, etc.) but I can easily live with these changes since I've always been rather skeptical of claims that D&D is in any way a simulation of a fantasy reality. I've always thought of D&D as quite a gamist exercise and it's always been good at that. If I want a more simulationist experience, I'll have WFRP to go to, since it provides a perfect simulation of at least one kind of a fantasy reality.
At the cost of dropping the simulationist mantle we've lost a couple of skills, namely Craft, Perform and Profession. I accept this choice, because these were niche skills to begin with: Craft was only good if you wanted to specialize in making your own magical items (and even then the Craft rules were rather arcane so you might've been better off just buying the item you wanted to enchant), Perform was of real substance for Bards only (unless you wanted to spend your downtime gaining a bit of extra coin) and Profession had no real use except for some really obscure Prestige Classes and gaining extra coin during downtime. Also, having said that Perform was only of use for Bards, I found it rather insulting that if I wanted to play a Bard I'd actually have to provide my own skill points for learning the Perform skill. This was effectively forcing players to spend some of their precious resources on actually getting the most out of their character class, which is not a design philosophy I agree with.
Problem is, removing these skills has lead some people into criticising the game for removing yet another great way of adding depth to a character, for surely Peter the Fighter is a much deeper character than Tom the Fighter simply because Peter spent some of his skill points on Profession (Farmhand). I'm simply of the opinion that if you need system support for playing a character with a memorable personality you might not have your priorities straight.
Another critique fielded against the removal of these non-combat skills is that it turns the game into pure hack 'n' slash. Well, leaving aside the facts of 4e finally fixing Diplomacy so that it doesn't have the potential of breaking the game at 5th level, a number of utility powers that are applicable in non-combat situations and a skill challenge system which actually makes non-combat encounters much more interesting and vibrant, isn't hack 'n' slash what this game, at its heart, is really about? Okay, the very first iteration of D&D was more about running around in some subterranean fantasy fucking Vietnam with a handful of hit points and always under the threat of death, but in the end D&D has always boiled down to killing monsters and taking their stuff!
The last critique, which I find completely valid, is the slaughtering of sacred cows to fit into the new setting assumptions. It is absolutely true that the setting has been changed, but personally I am not bothered by it, probably because I never made such an emotional investment into the D&D setting. In some ways I prefer the old setting assumptions, but in other ways the new setting just screams "Awesome!" like an undead dinosaur with laser gatling guns mounted on its back (the dinosaur is probably pissing heroin too) and I much prefer the morally ambiguous nature of the planes over the colour-coded planes of the Great Wheel setting. (The Great Wheel is a great setting for Planescape, which ran with all the assumptions that came with it, but for some other worlds it wasn't such a great fit. Probably explains why Eberron went with its own, much more distant and interesting planar arrangement.)
Of course, when one of the setting assumptions that has changed is that magic-users are more powerful than purely mundane characters I can see some people cringing. While I understand that magic being the most powerful force in the multiverse makes sense storywise, it doesn't work that way in a game which is supposed to be a group activity. It's not fun when everyone else has to play the Wizard's/Cleric's/Druid's and his animal companion's sidekicks. One could always counter by saying that these problems only exist at the higher levels of the game, but it doesn't exactly solve the problem. I'd rather play a game which has a modicum of balance at all levels of play rather than a game which I can't play at high levels because it'll turn into rocket launcher tag for the spellcasters. Besides, I'd rather have my martial character become more like Beowulf, Hercules or Cuchulain at high levels than them being "the guy who's just really, really good at swinging his sword".
Now for the required disclaimers: me liking 4e doesn't mean that I hate 3e. 3e provided me with some of the most fun RPG experiences in my entire life and it still has its own place in my heart. I will not stop playing 3e, mainly because I've still got so many character concepts that I'd like to try in it which do not yet map into 4e that well, but also because many of my friends have made such an investment into the game that it'd be nothing short of rude of me to demand them to switch into a game they might not enjoy as much.
In other news, I've already started running a campaign of 4e for a bunch of friends who seem to be enjoying it. Some of these people are complete noobs to the game and seeing them come up with characters was an extremely heart-warming exercise. It's quite something to see a grown man pick up the Player's Handbook and exclaim "Can I play one of these guys?" at the sight of Dragonborn and then having them exclaim "Cool, I can play a Paladin!" after reading the short blurb on them.