After almost three-hundred sessions both DM'ing and playing as a PC, I can confidently pick out what I like and dislike about the 4E system.
The Good - Overall I think the designers did a brave, incredible job creating an innovative rules set that reflected almost exactly how my D&D actually played at the table. Yes, the Fighter did get bored being a collection of feats with legs. Yes, the Wizard did get pissed off when she ran out of spells. And yes, my Cleric was frustrated being nothing but a heal-bot at high levels. Those things were all true and they were all fixed in 4E.
On top of that, with a selection of by-level difficulty guidelines which made improvisation an absolute breeze, and a framework for encounter building that left all the previous editions looking neanderthal in comparison, the game was a huge breath of fresh air in a 3E world with which I'd become increasingly disenchanted.
Showing posts with label DnD Next. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DnD Next. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Wednesday, 1 May 2013
D&D Next: The 3E Connection
You really can’t get away from it: DDN reads like an iteration of 3rd Edition. So for DDN to really work, it needs to keep everything that I liked about 3E, of which there’s a lot, and trash the stuff that put me off the game and eventually made me such a willing supplicant at the altar of 4E, of which there’s also a lot.
The Good - There's a lot of stuff I loved about 3E. It's difficult to separate the actual qualities of the game from the surge of excitement and relief that came from knowing D&D was finally in experienced, enthusiastic hands and that the product they were turning out was of such high quality, but after playing it for so many years I think I can scratch up some objectivity.
Unified rules - I vividly remember sitting on the sofa reading the 3E PHB and wondering where all the stuff I knew from AD&D2e had gone. It took a tangible mental shift for me to grok what the designers of 3E had actually done and how it all fit together into more than just a jumble of systems that, in previous versions, had happened to work well as a game (or didn't, as the case may have been). If I ever have to reference a table to resolve a die roll, the game has failed in this respect. For a good, free-flowing session where the DM can adjudicate fairly and improvise smart rulings on the fly, the mechanics need to be intuitive and broadly applicable to a wide range of play.
The Good - There's a lot of stuff I loved about 3E. It's difficult to separate the actual qualities of the game from the surge of excitement and relief that came from knowing D&D was finally in experienced, enthusiastic hands and that the product they were turning out was of such high quality, but after playing it for so many years I think I can scratch up some objectivity.
Unified rules - I vividly remember sitting on the sofa reading the 3E PHB and wondering where all the stuff I knew from AD&D2e had gone. It took a tangible mental shift for me to grok what the designers of 3E had actually done and how it all fit together into more than just a jumble of systems that, in previous versions, had happened to work well as a game (or didn't, as the case may have been). If I ever have to reference a table to resolve a die roll, the game has failed in this respect. For a good, free-flowing session where the DM can adjudicate fairly and improvise smart rulings on the fly, the mechanics need to be intuitive and broadly applicable to a wide range of play.
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