4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
Has it really been four editions? It seems like it wasn't all that long ago that I bought a briefcase full of weird books at a yard sale for like ten bucks... Weird ass books that proclaimed they would let me explore a world of poorly drawn and garishly colored critters and become a legendary hero, at least in my own mind and those of anyone else fortunate(?) enough to attempt to figure out the rules with me.
D&D has come a long way since then, and it's been especially interesting to consider how they'd top 3rd Edition, which was a complete reimagining of almost everything we had grown familar with over the years. Well, it's here... Or it will be, next week. But the first major release of 4th Edition is Adventure H1 (yay for module codes!), more commonly referred to as "Keep On The Shadowfell".
And if this is any indication of what we can expect from 4th Ed products, then it seems that WotC has finally gotten their tabletop RPG act together. In addition to the 80 page glossy color magazine-style adventure book, it also includes a 16 page pamphlet of quick-start 4th Edition rules, five premade adventurer characters, and three large double-sided poster style maps, covering six major areas of the adventure. The maps are notably also glossy and in color, with detailed, painted backgrounds and an overlaid grid with subtle indications of walls, inclines, and difficult terrain. While there are no rules for character advancement, each premade adventurer has annotations for the abilities they gain at second and third level, covering all the levelling that's expected to occur during the module.
Click here for all the glossy colory goodness (on my crappy cell camera)
"Keep on the Shadowfell" is a pretty decent introduction to what we have come to expect from an adventure for character levels 1-3... No dragons, yet, but there are certainly some dungeons, minor but vicious monsters to beat the crap out of, a small town, some NPC villagers, some totally over the top Indiana Jones style traps, a few (not very tricky) puzzles, and of course the big nasty villain from the cover of the box.
The overall presentation is great; The two books and three maps come inside a cardboard sleeve decorated in the style of an (extremely thin) dark, leather bound tome. The books themselves are decorated to match the design on the sleeve, and it looks great together, even after the postal service folded mine in half and jammed it into my tiny mailbox. The cover is a fine piece of artwork, though somewhat of a spoiler for the plot... However, it also portrays some things that don't happen/appear in the adventure, so whatever. It may just be the inflation talking, but 96 pages of gaming stuff, three maps, and enough 4th Edition rules to start playing the "new D&D" seems like a pretty good deal for under $20.
(EDIT: Apparently it has been too long since I actually paid money for a module; The general consensus is that they did an incredibly cheap printing, at least in terms of the paper and binding. I guess I'm dating myself, RPG module-wise, by being impressed that everything was in color. But media quality aside, it does still look nice.)
While the smaller maps and diagrams in the Adventure book are well done, in the same visual style as the poster maps, the other illustrations vary in quality. The Quick Start rules and sample character sheets are limited to pencil sketch style drawings, which, while pretty badass looking, don't entirely match the characters. (The classes and races are appropriate, but in almost all cases they're shown with prominent weapons and equipment that the characters don't actually own, which might confuse and/or disappoint your players.)
The sample characters are short and to the point, with pre-selected extra stuff you gain at levels 2 and 3. Unfortunately, they were designed with later expansion in mind rather than just being easy to read; This means that your players will be confronted with some fairly heavy vocabulary about a "Feat" that leverages the "Class Feature" of "Channel Divinity" to allow you to use a power, with no explaination of any of those terms. It's basically just reference text explaining how the character was created (in case you want to advance him/her after you buy the rulebooks), but it's confusing and meaningless in the context of an introductory game. It should be in italics, or listed after the stuff the player needs to know... or I guess you can just cross it out with a sharpie, but from the viewpoint of a potential DM, it left me flipping back and forth between the two books trying to find out what "Channel Divinity" means.
A few other concepts are similarly elusive (such as what "Concealment" and "Cover" actually do for you), and there are a few pitfalls for players who are familiar with the previous edition of D&D... Concepts like "Standard Actions", and "Flanking", and "Attacks Of Opportunity" are still used in 4th Ed, but work much differently.
The good news is that most of these changes are much-needed streamlining. The "Player" book contains six pages of rules, and the ones that players actually need to know by heart could fit on the back of a character sheet. The Adventure booklet devotes about 9 pages to rules, essentially a more detailed version of the player rules, plus some extra stuff for status effects, and another few pages on how to interpret and use the monster abilities, which are now condensed into little Magic The Gathering style blocks of info. (This allows you to easily put NPCs and critters on notecards, and presumably will also let WotC sell us "decks" of monsters and stuff... I definitely like the first half of that idea.)
I am planning to write a much more detailed view of 4th Edition as a system when the core rulebooks are released (and it is more legally appropriate for me to do so), but there a few interesting changes are notable just from paging through the Player's booklet:
The rules have become simpler, and more consistent. This is especially evident in terms of how Actions work (much, much simpler), and how Attacks Of Opportunity are made (less often, and when clearly prompted to). I think these are all good ideas, and much easier for me to wrap my head around than they were in previous edition.
Skills, Feats, and Powers allow characters to "break" or exceed the basic rules, and it is understood that specific exceptions always beat the general rules. This makes new abilities a lot easier to understand, and they've also done a good job so far of explaining how types of special abilities interact with each other, without the necessity for debates, voting, hanging chads, etc. In some ways, it feels almost like a CCG, where each ability comes with specific instructions about when and how you can use it. Not a big surprise given that it's WotC, and again, I think we can expect them to release actual sets of cards with this info on them... though nothing is stopping me from printing or scrawling them onto 3x5s myself.
All of the character classes have an equal number of abilities can be used at will, once per "scene", and and once per "day". There does still seem to be some flexibility there in terms of abilities you can aquire based on race, class, and via additional feats, but no classes can ever "run out" of special abilities. Even a first level wizard has spells that can be used all day long, and even a Fighter has some crazy moves that need to saved for the best opportunity. Everyone gets to do some resource management, which I think is a great idea. But this also means that Wizards and Priests are no longer privy to entire books full of extra secret magic junk that nobody else gets; This may make you sad and nostaglic for the good old days.
There is a new concept of "Healing Surges" allowed per day, and a "Second Wind" that any character can use to recover some health during combat. This initally sounded like a Bad Idea(TM) to me, but in practice it's much more interesing. While it does mean that all characters can essentially heal themselves a little, and adventuring parties will tend to recover to their full capacity after most battles even without magical help, it's important to note that this also puts a hard limit on how much a person can be healed per day, which is waaay more hardcore than any previous version of the game.
While some people decried Healing Surges and Second Wind as the "death of resource management" in 4th Ed, that's really not the case; It's much more of an end to the monopoly on healing that used to be all about Clerics (and their ubiquitous proxy, the Healing Potion). It also expands the concept of Hit Points; You now measure how much of a beating your character can take before he falls down, as well as the number of times you can expect him to get back up. There's also a concept of being "bloodied" (e.g. below 50% of your total health), which is also a pretty big deal now.
4th Edition puts a much bigger emphasis on "tactical" or minatures-style combat. I expect this to be one of the biggest points of contention for most existing players. To be fair, the 4th Ed tactical rules are a hell of a lot better than their 3rd Ed counterparts, but it's a double edged sword; If you don't play 4th Ed on a map (or at least an eraseable white board), you're going to miss a lot of the new rules, and a fair amount of the subtleties of the new spells and combat abilities.
4th Edition is going to involve a lot of merchandise. It is not a coincidence that you get a dollar sign if you hold down the shift key while typing 4th Ed. In addition to the obvious Ability and Monster cards, the increased focus on tactical combat is already being used as a selling point for WotC maps and miniatures, and for WotC's upcoming subscription based online Gaming Table service, which provides a 3D graphical mapping system for running games over the internet. None of this is required, or even strictly necessary, but some feathers may be ruffled after people drop a lot of money on core rulebooks that encourage them to then buy lots of other stuff to "improve their experience".
4th Edition has some questionable licensing terms. This is going to turn into an additional post/rant at some point, since nothing has carved in stone (and stained with independent gamer blood) just yet, but WotC seems to have rethought the whole Open Gaming License thing, and their legal department is acting on those changes. It's not clear how the new agreement will work, but it's clear that you will NOT be allowed to publish any 4th Ed licensed stuff if you are still publishing any 3rd Ed stuff, and the old "d20" license and logo has been revoked. In short, as someone once told Vin Diesel, you must convert now, or fall forever... as if hardcore D&D players needed any more reason to get really divisive about which rules to use.
D&D has come a long way since then, and it's been especially interesting to consider how they'd top 3rd Edition, which was a complete reimagining of almost everything we had grown familar with over the years. Well, it's here... Or it will be, next week. But the first major release of 4th Edition is Adventure H1 (yay for module codes!), more commonly referred to as "Keep On The Shadowfell".
And if this is any indication of what we can expect from 4th Ed products, then it seems that WotC has finally gotten their tabletop RPG act together. In addition to the 80 page glossy color magazine-style adventure book, it also includes a 16 page pamphlet of quick-start 4th Edition rules, five premade adventurer characters, and three large double-sided poster style maps, covering six major areas of the adventure. The maps are notably also glossy and in color, with detailed, painted backgrounds and an overlaid grid with subtle indications of walls, inclines, and difficult terrain. While there are no rules for character advancement, each premade adventurer has annotations for the abilities they gain at second and third level, covering all the levelling that's expected to occur during the module.
Click here for all the glossy colory goodness (on my crappy cell camera)
"Keep on the Shadowfell" is a pretty decent introduction to what we have come to expect from an adventure for character levels 1-3... No dragons, yet, but there are certainly some dungeons, minor but vicious monsters to beat the crap out of, a small town, some NPC villagers, some totally over the top Indiana Jones style traps, a few (not very tricky) puzzles, and of course the big nasty villain from the cover of the box.
The overall presentation is great; The two books and three maps come inside a cardboard sleeve decorated in the style of an (extremely thin) dark, leather bound tome. The books themselves are decorated to match the design on the sleeve, and it looks great together, even after the postal service folded mine in half and jammed it into my tiny mailbox. The cover is a fine piece of artwork, though somewhat of a spoiler for the plot... However, it also portrays some things that don't happen/appear in the adventure, so whatever. It may just be the inflation talking, but 96 pages of gaming stuff, three maps, and enough 4th Edition rules to start playing the "new D&D" seems like a pretty good deal for under $20.
(EDIT: Apparently it has been too long since I actually paid money for a module; The general consensus is that they did an incredibly cheap printing, at least in terms of the paper and binding. I guess I'm dating myself, RPG module-wise, by being impressed that everything was in color. But media quality aside, it does still look nice.)
While the smaller maps and diagrams in the Adventure book are well done, in the same visual style as the poster maps, the other illustrations vary in quality. The Quick Start rules and sample character sheets are limited to pencil sketch style drawings, which, while pretty badass looking, don't entirely match the characters. (The classes and races are appropriate, but in almost all cases they're shown with prominent weapons and equipment that the characters don't actually own, which might confuse and/or disappoint your players.)
The sample characters are short and to the point, with pre-selected extra stuff you gain at levels 2 and 3. Unfortunately, they were designed with later expansion in mind rather than just being easy to read; This means that your players will be confronted with some fairly heavy vocabulary about a "Feat" that leverages the "Class Feature" of "Channel Divinity" to allow you to use a power, with no explaination of any of those terms. It's basically just reference text explaining how the character was created (in case you want to advance him/her after you buy the rulebooks), but it's confusing and meaningless in the context of an introductory game. It should be in italics, or listed after the stuff the player needs to know... or I guess you can just cross it out with a sharpie, but from the viewpoint of a potential DM, it left me flipping back and forth between the two books trying to find out what "Channel Divinity" means.
A few other concepts are similarly elusive (such as what "Concealment" and "Cover" actually do for you), and there are a few pitfalls for players who are familiar with the previous edition of D&D... Concepts like "Standard Actions", and "Flanking", and "Attacks Of Opportunity" are still used in 4th Ed, but work much differently.
The good news is that most of these changes are much-needed streamlining. The "Player" book contains six pages of rules, and the ones that players actually need to know by heart could fit on the back of a character sheet. The Adventure booklet devotes about 9 pages to rules, essentially a more detailed version of the player rules, plus some extra stuff for status effects, and another few pages on how to interpret and use the monster abilities, which are now condensed into little Magic The Gathering style blocks of info. (This allows you to easily put NPCs and critters on notecards, and presumably will also let WotC sell us "decks" of monsters and stuff... I definitely like the first half of that idea.)
I am planning to write a much more detailed view of 4th Edition as a system when the core rulebooks are released (and it is more legally appropriate for me to do so), but there a few interesting changes are notable just from paging through the Player's booklet:
The rules have become simpler, and more consistent. This is especially evident in terms of how Actions work (much, much simpler), and how Attacks Of Opportunity are made (less often, and when clearly prompted to). I think these are all good ideas, and much easier for me to wrap my head around than they were in previous edition.
Skills, Feats, and Powers allow characters to "break" or exceed the basic rules, and it is understood that specific exceptions always beat the general rules. This makes new abilities a lot easier to understand, and they've also done a good job so far of explaining how types of special abilities interact with each other, without the necessity for debates, voting, hanging chads, etc. In some ways, it feels almost like a CCG, where each ability comes with specific instructions about when and how you can use it. Not a big surprise given that it's WotC, and again, I think we can expect them to release actual sets of cards with this info on them... though nothing is stopping me from printing or scrawling them onto 3x5s myself.
All of the character classes have an equal number of abilities can be used at will, once per "scene", and and once per "day". There does still seem to be some flexibility there in terms of abilities you can aquire based on race, class, and via additional feats, but no classes can ever "run out" of special abilities. Even a first level wizard has spells that can be used all day long, and even a Fighter has some crazy moves that need to saved for the best opportunity. Everyone gets to do some resource management, which I think is a great idea. But this also means that Wizards and Priests are no longer privy to entire books full of extra secret magic junk that nobody else gets; This may make you sad and nostaglic for the good old days.
There is a new concept of "Healing Surges" allowed per day, and a "Second Wind" that any character can use to recover some health during combat. This initally sounded like a Bad Idea(TM) to me, but in practice it's much more interesing. While it does mean that all characters can essentially heal themselves a little, and adventuring parties will tend to recover to their full capacity after most battles even without magical help, it's important to note that this also puts a hard limit on how much a person can be healed per day, which is waaay more hardcore than any previous version of the game.
While some people decried Healing Surges and Second Wind as the "death of resource management" in 4th Ed, that's really not the case; It's much more of an end to the monopoly on healing that used to be all about Clerics (and their ubiquitous proxy, the Healing Potion). It also expands the concept of Hit Points; You now measure how much of a beating your character can take before he falls down, as well as the number of times you can expect him to get back up. There's also a concept of being "bloodied" (e.g. below 50% of your total health), which is also a pretty big deal now.
4th Edition puts a much bigger emphasis on "tactical" or minatures-style combat. I expect this to be one of the biggest points of contention for most existing players. To be fair, the 4th Ed tactical rules are a hell of a lot better than their 3rd Ed counterparts, but it's a double edged sword; If you don't play 4th Ed on a map (or at least an eraseable white board), you're going to miss a lot of the new rules, and a fair amount of the subtleties of the new spells and combat abilities.
4th Edition is going to involve a lot of merchandise. It is not a coincidence that you get a dollar sign if you hold down the shift key while typing 4th Ed. In addition to the obvious Ability and Monster cards, the increased focus on tactical combat is already being used as a selling point for WotC maps and miniatures, and for WotC's upcoming subscription based online Gaming Table service, which provides a 3D graphical mapping system for running games over the internet. None of this is required, or even strictly necessary, but some feathers may be ruffled after people drop a lot of money on core rulebooks that encourage them to then buy lots of other stuff to "improve their experience".
4th Edition has some questionable licensing terms. This is going to turn into an additional post/rant at some point, since nothing has carved in stone (and stained with independent gamer blood) just yet, but WotC seems to have rethought the whole Open Gaming License thing, and their legal department is acting on those changes. It's not clear how the new agreement will work, but it's clear that you will NOT be allowed to publish any 4th Ed licensed stuff if you are still publishing any 3rd Ed stuff, and the old "d20" license and logo has been revoked. In short, as someone once told Vin Diesel, you must convert now, or fall forever... as if hardcore D&D players needed any more reason to get really divisive about which rules to use.