Hey Man, well this is Babylon

Last night I played 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons with some folks here in town, getting my very first actual play experience with the new system from Wizards of the Coast. All the guys were spot-on fellas, and I had a lot of fun. Yes, I do look forward to playing again, too. Can ya believe it? Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on 4th Edition so far, and some of my mixed reactions to the game. Yes, there is a good bit of griping ahead, but like I said, I do hope to find out more as the system unfolds.

Thankfully, one of the players knew the system very well. His presence was welcome, and I’m very grateful for all the assistance that he provided me with in figuring out how to play the game - and I’m pretty embarrassed to admit that I really did need a lot of assistance with it. I’ll say it now: I believe that D&D 4th Edition is not an easy game for brand new players. But even worse, I’ll risk stating that I don’t think it’s all that easy for experienced players of other tabletop systems, either. I’m pretty good at picking up and learning systems on the get-go, and this one gave me problems. At one point in the evening, I made a comment about how I sound like “the gaming girlfriend” of the session, because in truth that’s exactly how I felt. “What’s this mean?” and “What do I roll?” and “Now what do I add?” and “What should I do here?” were questions frequently issued from my lips. I was very confused by a lot of the terminology and the mathematical variables, and at the beginning of the game I felt a bit overwhelmed by the myriad of mechanical options available to me right from the start. Don’t get me wrong here, I love having lots of options in game mechanics, but this was a bit much for me to comfortably interpret right at the get-go.

So who is this game good for? C’mon, you know it’s coming: people who enjoy Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs, aka MMORPGS. It’s very obvious in just about every nook and cranny of the system, from the character “roles” to the “per encounter” abilities and the character ability development chart. In fact, it really wasn’t until I started imagining my character’s various abilities in “quick slots” on an invisible HUD that I actually started to really get the feel of the game’s proper flow. It takes a certain kind of mind to be able to enjoy video games like World of Warcraft and Everquest and the like. You have to be able to find enjoyment and comfort in repetition. You have to have a mind for the long-term planning of effective character builds. You have to be able to appreciate the frequent grind (kill monsters to get loot to get more powerful to kill bigger monsters, repeat) as a part of the gameplay experience. I can appreciate these things, but only in small doses. It’s why I’ve never been able to tolerate a MMORPG for more than a few weeks, and why I don’t think the D&D 4th Edition game system will have a long-lasting appeal for me. I can see enjoying it with the current gaming group just because they are all four some spot-on awesome guys, but in the long run, there isn’t any actual substance to it, just a lot of dice rolling and character-building.

To me, the whole focus on “builds” in video games and tabletop games like 3rd and 4th Edition D&D is thematically antagonistic to the focus of their predecessors. In 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, for example, you could play without worrying about “burning feats” and wasting character points and such, and generally just pick up and play. Likewise, in the video games that followed them, such as the fantastic Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale series, you could make a character and just start playing, and take that character wherever you wanted without worrying about making wasteful decisions. Supposedly, having the option to “build” a character gives the player more control over the character’s direction and development. Instead, however, I find that this extra level of “control” comes at the cost of the player being ultimately less able to actually enjoy their character at any point Right Now. With such a huge focus on builds, you are rarely (if ever) playing the character you want to play, instead playing the character who will be the character you want to play after she gains a handful of additional experience levels. The player is always thinking a level or three ahead, and never “Man, I’m great right now!” The only times they find their actual character to be awesome seem to be when they are, much later, regaling their friends with tales of those characters’ exploits. “Jam tomorrow, Jam yesterday, but never ever Jam today,” so to speak.

I’ve heard a few other gamers state how they feel that this focus on builds in the current crop of major tabletop RPGs is in large due to increasing influences from the mechanics being so popular in video RPGs of the current day. If this is the case, then what is next? There was a time when finding “secret information” on video games was rare and difficult, and the exclusive domain of expensive mail-ordered strategy guides and platform-specific insider magazine subscriptions. But today, with the prevalence of the internet in our world, you’d be hard-pressed to pick a popular game, even a brand-new one, and not be able to look online for one or more fan-made walk-throughs and secrets guides. Are our tabletop games going this direction, too? Will game companies start publishing hardbound supplements in the $20+ range that are nothing but “FAQs” to their previously-published adventures? WotC’s already tried that at least once before. Will upcoming GM advice books start suggesting that GMs print sealed cheat sheets for the players, so the poor fellas don’t have to worry about thinking to hard and wasting valuable killing-time trying to solve the more difficult puzzles on their own?

But back to the game. Once I started getting the hang of things, I got some ideas for the future (the campaign is supposed to be round-robin GMing, by the way). I half-jokingly voiced how I’d like to run a session without any combat at all, however, and a player commented how that would be the most boring D&D game to ever exist. This startled me. What about the “RP” part of the acronym? Sure, combat is fun, and I wasn’t even serious about that little joke. I admit to needing at least a tiny bit of action to spice my drama up. But if the real reason we’re here is to just kill ‘em all and take their stuff, then why the pretense of roleplaying? When it boils down to it, what does a character’s alignment and his complex, sordid past really have to do with the combat? Why are we even giving the characters names anymore? Do we just call them something unique like K1LLsT4bbEr187 so our teammates will have an icon to click on when targeting their spells? Or has roleplaying just been reduced to the “…and take their stuff” part of the equation?

I wondered at that point: why are we even playing a tabletop roleplaying game, then? There are plenty of minis combat games which handle Battle Mat Skirmishes far more effectively and dramatically: Warhammer, Warmachine, Heroclix, even D&D Minis all have superior minis combat rules. To me, a roleplaying game is not just about killing things and getting loot. Puzzles, dramatics, intrigue, plot and more, these are and always have been crucial parts of good roleplaying games. When I mentioned these other features of what I considered to be a “good game,” I believe the response was something along the lines of leaving those things for the “story games.” Wha-huh? I’ve only been playing “story games” for a year or so now, but I’ve been gaming since I was eight years old. Almost all of my earliest and fondest gaming memories involved great puzzles, dramatic debates with the rulers of kingdoms, kidnappings of princesses, ancient tomes of dark power, and many more elements of Fantasy Roleplaying that were outside of combat - and these were in super-combat-heavy games like Rifts, RoleMaster, and AD&D 1st Edition.

Today, it seems that all semblances of plot and dramatics have been officially relegated to the so-called “Story Games,” leaving more traditional big name games as little more than Combat Sims with some extra fiddly bits tacked-on. Even my favorite major system of them all, Savage Worlds, isn’t much more than a minis combat game. The only real difference is that it actually makes a valiant attempt at emphasizing the importance of story and non-combat play and how crucial they are to fantastic games. 4th Ed, not so much. If ever I do end up running a session or two of this campaign, I will include a little combat, for sure. But I will also do my damnedest to take it in a different direction, at least for a short run. I’d like to have NPCs that aren’t there just to be arrow cozies. I’d have encounters that could only be overcome by running away (and of course gaining experience). I’d have flashbacks, and cut scenes, and more.

Oh wait, that’s a story game. Silly me, what was I thinking?

- NPC
- is still astounded at how most gamers can easily accept “the dice say your character’s leg is severed,” but get outraged when I dare to suggest “the dice say the woman has changed your mind.”