I see this review as a cookie cutter of the majority of all the other rants out there on the net about 4th.
The author of this review seems to forget that D&D has always been hugely combat oriented particularly in its first incarnation. It was all about fighting your way through a dungeon, killing monsters, getting treasure. The refinements that came later as the game evolved lessened this a bit, but I'm sorry, 1st edition was by far much more combat oriented than 4th.
Miniatures have always played a role in D&D, especially in the beginning when all it was was a set of rules that allowed you to take your knight characters that were developed from your leaders in the Chainmail rules and ran them through a dungeon.
Computers - Online gaming is a huge influence in our society today. To divorce yourself from this influence while trying to build a game that is the definition of modern "pop" RPG's is absurd. Just as D&D influenced Everquest and later WoW, so now they influence D&D. By combining the clean and well-defined mechanics of MMORPG's with the open endedness of tabletop gaming I think you end up with a superior way to play D&D.
Exception Based Gaming - ALL games are about this. The statement the author is referring to is recognition that when you are building a game sometimes it's how you break the rules that makes the game exciting. This is what made Magic: the Gathering work so well. This is what makes board games work... I've played 3.5 and to suggest that there are more little things to remember with 4th shows an inherant lack of understanding about how 4th works.
I'm not sure how much the author of this review has actually played 4th. I have played D&D since 1976 and this does feel like D&D. We have now played 4th to a point where our characters have reached 3rd level. Yes, things have changed. the monsters behave more dynamically, the characters at first level have far more options available than casting their one or two sleep spells, and our party is still walking down the 40' damp hallway tapping as we go and looking for secret doors. I suspect the author doesn't want the game to feel like D&D because that would mean he'd have to admit liking it.
I'm sorry if others have made the same observations as I. Perhaps that's because they have some validity?
As I said in my review, I have NOT yet had chance to run or play the game. I am very glad to hear that my hopes (that it would all click in play and would turn out to be a blast) sound like they have been realised for your group, and my fear (that the huge number of available exceptions to the rules would overwhelm the poor DM's brain) have not. I'm greatly looking forward to running the game and finding out how it works for my group.
I have to disagree about earlier editions being more combat-centric than 4th Ed. Original D&D (which I read but have not played) may have been, but AD&D 1st Ed didn't seem that way to me. Particularly for spell casters, a lot of the stuff which was not directly relevant to a fight has been bumped into a ritual, which takes up a very sparse eight pages of PHB, and the skills system has been very much reduced in prominance compared with 3.5 Ed for example.
I am well aware that D&D originated in the Chainmail rules- a fact I referred to in my review (with stuff being ranged in inches on the table rather than feet). The fact is that 4th Edition has reverted to using minature-based descriptions of everything, rather than the real-world-units found throughout 3.5 Ed. Personally, I prefer not to use minatures unless I have to. With 3.5 Ed this is easy (provided you more or less ignore attacks of opportunity). In 4th Ed, I'm not sure it will be.
Exception based gaming- there ARE systems out there which are not exception-based. Dragonlance 5th Age is my favourite example where all the rules fit on a single side of A4 card. Most card games and board games are indeed exception-based, but I personally prefer the elegance of a simpler ruleset. Call of Cthulhu isn't particularly exception based (all the skills work all the same for all the characters all of the time, although the magic is a bit variable, fortunately few spells are cast in the average game). That is another of my favourite systems as a result.
You quote Magic: the Gathering. The difference between that game and D&D is that MtG does not have a DM who is required to cope with (and interpret) all the hundreds and hundreds of rule exceptions. My fear is that the burden of knowledge on me as DM in order to run a fight between a high level party and a bunch of high level NPCs will be intolerable, and may result in the same sort of "my specialist rule trumps your specialist rule" problems that can plague these exception-based designs.
My personal preference is for a game I can run with no game books on the table to refer to. So... as I said in my review, that's the single biggest concern I personally have with running the game, especially in the light of 3.5 Ed bad experiences with other people's games.
On the other points, we actually seem to be in furious agreement. I completely agree that feeding back some of the nicer aspects of MMORPGs has improved many aspects of the way the system works- as I said, equally out the level progression for the different classes and making combat look like it should be much more fun for wizards and rogues.
It seems bizarre to end with the statement that "I suspect the author doesn't want the game to feel like D&D because that would mean he'd have to admit liking it."
I like the game, and said so. I liked earlier editions enough to run them, too. I have worries about running it but it looks like it should be great fun to play, especially if you favour fairly combat-heavy games.
So perhaps yours was a cookie-cutter response to the cookie-cutter reviews, rather than actually reading mine...
Hear, hear, Hywel. I found the exact same thing you did when I looked through the core books. And so did the guy behind the counter at the game store, who was actually grimacing as he read the books.
Incidently, I was there almost immediately after reading the 4e books to buy Castles & Crusades, which is exactly the experience you and I seem to prefer. A rules set that is easy to teach (15 minutes) and run and where the rules are based off a simple combination of attributes/archetypes and exceptions come in the description of the players and the judgement of the DM, not from a hundred fiddly little powers.
I've posted the same concerns on other forum boards, and I've played all the other editions as well and love the game for a bit of high fantasy, but thsi game does not feel like D&D anymore. It feels like a MMO or a game of Descent. And that's the point, really, if you want that sort of feel, then why not play WoW or Descent? I mean seriously, why would an MMO player want to memorize all that information, keep track of all the fiddley adds during combat (of which there are even more now, even if they're smaller), etc. etc. when they can just get on their computer let it do all the work while they get on with the 'questing for fat l00tz?' The only benefit is the social aspect, and they can have a LAN party for that...
Your review has many! incredulous! statements! and ranty questions like "For the love of god, why???" You have more negative things to say than positive, and you don't couch any of the negative with qualifiers like "This is a small nitpick of an otherwise great product, but I really have to get it off my chest". The review reads angry, I couldn't draw a map between what you wrote and the 4/4 score you gave, so that positive score seems grudging to me, too.
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Clint, that's fair comment. I like the way the game reads, but am quite nervous about how easy it will be to run. It looks like it should be fun as a player. I am looking forward to giving it a go.
So it is positive. Not grudging, but with reservations, and I'd be happier to try a good ol' dungeon crawl than a complicated high politics game with 4th Ed. The good ol' dungeon crawl looks like it should be a complete hoot, and much more fun than any previous edition.
Most of the "for the love of god, why?" comments are because they seem like a massive retrograde step. Tying the game so closely to minatures when much of the 30 year progress of D&D has been to shake free of the minatures heritage seems a bit perverse to me. It precludes my favoured style of GM'ing in a way that 3.5 did not. Hence, for me, a retrograde step which I just don't see the need for.
Ditto the over-emphasis on the combat capabilities of all the characters powersets- quite a step backwards.
A lot will also depend on the expansions. If the expansions flesh out the non-combat side of the game, it could make it one of the best RPGs for general fantasy games out there. If the expansions make the Paladin more kewl with more zappy combat powers, more feats, more l00t, it could turn it a nightmare of Epic level (21+, right? )
Thanks for this review. It pretty much cements my earlier feelings about D&D 4th edition--it looks like a good game, but it doesn't look like a game I want to play.
I'm still hoping to test it out at Origins or Gencon.
I agree with cybersluagh, D&D 4red doesn't sound like something I'd be interested.Maybe playing it would be fine, but running it? Don't think so. I already find 3.0 and 3.5 nightmarish.
Oh, and I was going to make the same point as Clint: reading your review, I ahve no idea how you arrived at a 4 for substance. It seems more like a 3, if not a 2.
Thanks for the review.
Tchau!
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Great review. Could have refrained from the "For the love of god...", but I know where you are coming from. -Some odd development choices to say the least.
This game would have my full support if it were called "BattleMasters".
It really feels different to me too. Much like a MMORPG.
It's funny how people try to talk me out of how I feel about it, or tell my why my opinion is wrong. I've been gaming for a long time. I've played MMORPGs. 4e D&D feels like a step in that direction.
It even seems it could be fun once in a while. It just won't work for what I like to do at the gaming table. Not without more effort than I am willing to make. There's many other games that are a better fit.
Thank you for this excellent review. This is exactly the kind of analysis of 4e I have been looking for, its "feeling" and how it comes across.
The game's move toward more battle-oriented adventures seems an unfortunate one. Modeling it after computer games is tantamount to saying, "Yeah, we know the game requires less thought now, but that should make it easier for young, computer oriented players to pick it up." Sadly, they are probably correct.
I'm not sure why you are getting knocked for your review being too "negative," I thought you struck a very balanced tone. People get emotional over D&D, which I suppose is a good thing.
Overall, it sounds like a good game, if you are into battle and miniature games. If it were all contained in a $35 book, I might get it. But at nearly $100 for all 3 books, I don't think so. Especially when I look at my shelf of D&D 3x, around $200 in books. There's nothing wrong with the game I'm playing, so I'll likely stick with that.
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