Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons

In June 2008, Wizards of the Coast published the Fourth Edition of the grandpappy of all RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons.

I learned to roleplay back in the mists of time with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (also known as First Edition--1979-1989). Heck, I even had, though I never played, the "Red Box" of Dungeons and Dragons. (I believe my copy is long lost, however...) Most of my D&D career was spend in Second (1989-2000) and Third Editions (2000-2003), especially version 3.5 (2003-2008). So I have been a fan and a player all my roleplaying life.

I really, really wanted to like Fourth Edition. I did. And it is certainly a fine game, for what it is designed to do. But I find that I don't like running it.

Why?

1. Miniatures Wargaming. The game has taken its emphasis on miniatures to new heights. I understand that they want to use the game to sell D&D miniatures, but I never liked that aspect of the game under Third Edition, and I like it even less with Fourth. I just seem to lack the strategic talents to run a miniatures combat game, and that's pretty much what D&D4E is. Could I pick up these talents with time? Probably, but I wouldn't be having much fun while doing it.

2. Video Game Style. Since Third Edition, massively multiplayer online roleplaying games have grown as an industry. Go out on the street and start asking random people if they ever played World of Warcraft, and you'll probably find someone pretty quickly. And so, Wizards decided to try and lure some of those gamers back to pen and paper play. Many aspects from MMORPGs are in 4E, including such staples as "powers," "resting restores your hit points," "no race/class has any weakness," etc. In a way, it's amusing, since video games stole so many ideas from D&D, and now D&D returns the favor. But this strains my suspension of disbelief and, I think, it promotes a "fight-rest-fight-rest-fight-rest" mentality.

3. Lack of non-combat options. D&D has always been about "kill the monster, take his stuff." 4E takes this even further, I think, as they have not included much in the way of non-combat systems. The only thing they have is the Skill Challenge system, which I find rather clunky to use. To make matters worse, within weeks of the books hitting the shelves, Wizards had to post some hefty errata (excuse me, "updates"--more video game jargon) on the Skill Challenge system.

So, we have a game where I don't like the combat system, and where there is almost nothing BUT a combat system.

Now, 4E has several good things going for it. It's easy to make a character, the classes and races are well-balanced, and while I don't like the miniatures wargaming aspect, the game handles it very well.

I gave it a good try. I've played in several games, and I ran four sessions of my new Plagueborne campaign in it, but my unhappiness kept growing. So, I put it to my gaming group, and we've decided to abandon 4E and use Burning Wheel to play Plagueborne. So, I'll probably talk in another post about how that goes.

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