Why?
That's the main question that has been running through my mind since last night, when I got back home after getting my first actual play exposure to the newest edition of D&D (that's Dungeons & Dragons).
Seriously, why?
Faithful to the brand, I had bought the core books when they came out, then shelled another $60 or so on a full case of the character cards for good measure. Yes, I know, it's been out for over a year now, but I never got around to playing it until now. When I was invited for a one-off session, I jumped at the opportunity to get firsthand experience with what looked like more than an update of good ol' D&D, which all previous editions had been to some degree or other.
I must note that having played all of them, I had considered each new edition up to and including 3.5 an improvement over previous ones, streamlining rules and introducing others without hurting the core beauty of the system. Skimming the 4th edition books gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling, because for the first time after 25 years, I found myself frequently lost. Sure, at a basic level the terminology was more or less the same, but anywhere I read the details were very different. Still, I was excited about the revision, hoping against hope that in actual play, it would deliver on the big promise of 3.5 - streamlined mechanics without sacrificing the flavor.
Trouble started as soon as I set down to try and create a character. No matter how I approached it, I kept getting confused; pretty much nothing works the same way anymore. Eventually I downloaded some software to help me through it, which is when I began noticing a very worrying trend: the variety was gone.
No matter where I went, even though the designers went to obvious lengths to give things a lot of variance in look&feel, the underlying mechanics have become extremely rigid. For example, the various magical implements all work the exact same way, whether they are rods, wands or staves. Sure, they have different names, and sure, their descriptions are a little different, but when you examine the detail, you quickly note that there is no actual variance between them; a +1 rod of whatever will cost the exact same amount as a +1 staff of whichever, and do the exact same thing, which is to improve the wielder's magical attack rolls by 1. The side effects will add another die to the damage on a critical hit or have a minor effect. That's it. Nothing special, nothing quirky, nothing strange or unexpected or tricky or fun. The same goes for every other class of magic item - weapons, armor, and so on. The only place where they have preserved a tiny amount of interest is in the wondrous item category, but it has been shrunk considerably and made as boring as humanly possible in order to "fit" it into the new structure.
This was greatly disturbing to me. Part of D&D's strength has always been the variance in the system, its ability to handle pretty much any crazy thing that you would throw at it reasonably well, thereby supporting oodles of crazy things that people have thrown at it. Sure, some of them ended up having unexpected influences on the game, but the mechanics were always able to handle it with grace. They were accommodating. In 4th edition everything is so rigid you can easily memorize the entire magical item cost table by remembering about 30 entries, because all items have "levels" that are strictly defined, and they all have a "+" and a side effect which is also strictly defined, cost the exact same amount based on the level, and... well, it's just boring.
I chose a wizard because I've always liked D&D's magic system (I know, I'm weird), and since I rarely ever get to play (as opposed to DM), I figured why not. So I got to work through the spell selections, and they also seemed to suffer from the same problem; all the fun and unusual spells in the old spell lists was gone, replaced by a similar kind of attitude. Spells are broken into rigid components and otherwise straightjacketed so tight you can't even imagine sticking in something kooky. All the fun stuff is either gone or moved into a new class of stuff called "rituals", which seems to include the very few things that the designers simply could not get rid of but had no way to "fit" into the new magic system (e.g. the Knock spell). Magic seems to have lost its magic. And everyone can have rituals.
Bland.
Sure, it's all so simple, easy to understand, easy to acquire if you are new to the game. I know many people who have been playing D&D for years and are still learning the basics of the system, because it has always been rather complex, what with all its twists and turns and dark corners and exceptions and ways to handle other exceptions that nobody thought of... but it was all necessary to allow flexibility, which has always been its strength. And it didn't matter, because the rules were layered, and you knew that no matter what you wanted, it would be handled and someone would know how to do it. So you went along and picked up stuff along the way. As long as you had a good DM, you would be fine. Here... I was running out of interesting things to examine in the first half hour of character creation.
It went on and on. By the time I ended I had a somewhat hollow sense that I had just wasted 4 hours doing nothing but an accounting task. I was worried, but I still hoped I would enjoy the game itself. Maybe all this simplicity would help in streamlining combat, allowing us to roleplay more. That would be good, because anyone who has played D&D can remember combats that just lasted forever and a day, as people were looking for rules for special situations, or trying somehow to hold on as their magic and healing was being depleted, thus taking actions designed to maximize their advantage and preserving their hides. It could take a long time in real life. 4th edition combat sounded pretty straight forward, with powers that could be reused at will, or once per encounter, or what have you, and every character could heal themselves by foregoing an attack, making the cleric a bit less critical. Or at least so I hoped.
So we started our adventure and... our first combat lasted 4 hours, and was boring as hell. Why? for several reasons. First of all, no criticals anymore. If you roll a 20, you get maximum damage, but that's it. That's no fun; big critical damage has always been part of the excitement, the breaker of tense moments... if you've been playing for a while, you must remember plenty of times where the party's life is hanging in the balance, and someone rolls that magical "20" and everyone screams and hollers because as stupid as it is, you know a crit will change things. Not anymore. I saw three "20"s being rolled in the first half hour and it was entirely "ho hum"; weapon does maximum damage, thank you, good bye. Heck, at least three other attacks ended up doing the same thing without a crit. Where's the fun?
Then it was the powers - the mightiness of renewing powers between encounters. That was the big promise of the new system after all; a wizard doesn't lose all their powers in one combat, people can heal more rapidly with healing surges, and so on. Except that the important spells have daily use so they suffer the same limitations, and healing surges are pointless because everything has so many hit points it just takes longer to kill. In fact, as I was slogging through I realized that the entire system has been recalibrated to be far less random and chaotic; no instant deaths, no big upsets, no rapid changes in momentum... it is perfectly designed for larger scale faceless mini combat, where you don't care about any particular participant as long as you win the battle. That's great and all, except D&D is not Warhammer; it's always been about the party, and the characters, and they mattered individually.
In 4th edition everything is evened out, you always know what to expect, nothing gets killed in one shot, weapons are reliable in the damage they give out to the point of being infuriating, and it gets to the point where there is no tension. "Oh, here's a goblin, it will take 2-3 hits to kill; the elite ogre will probably take 8-9; I can soak 4 hits before I need to surge". The variances are so small they become meaningless, and the game truly does degenerate into rolling dice hoping to hit target numbers. No excitement. Tactical warfare? baloney. When variances are so small, the DM's task is reduced to making sure the opposing parties are well-matched. I cannot imagine major upsets ever happening, because even if a 5th-level PC scores a lucky crit against that 10th-level monster, the latter would shrug it off as the weapon bites for max damage - just another in a series of endless scrapes and cuts. What's the point? and there is no advantage to the streamlining, either, because things just take longer, as you are required to go through the motions more times, make more die rolls, and so on. No special power that can break the rules momentarily. No big spell or item or weapon or whatever. It's all so damn structured.
It then dawned on me that the whole notion of renewed powers was to allow groups to go into multiple battles in a game day. Since when did this ever trouble anyone? it's not like sleeping overnight in D&D takes more than 1 minute in game time. In a dungeon? lock the door of the room you're in and sleep. 60 seconds later you're ready for action. What's the big deal? it's as if somebody started believing the fantasy timeline somehow mattered in real life, and literally dismantled the entire system just to accommodate a supposedly more "realistic" approach to time - in a fantasy role playing game... not to mention that this is all nonsense anyway, as my group has had no trouble at all "clearing out" entire dungeon levels or sections without "rest" even at low levels, since by the time 3.5 rolled around, wizards could do a lot more than "magic missile and rest", just as clerics could do much more than be a traveling band-aid dispenser.
Speaking of wizards, and going back to my game yesterday... magic is not only much less varied, but also much less interesting and powerful. Clean out a room full of goblins with a fireball? no can do, mister. See, all them goblins have 60 hit points, and you do too, but fireball is still 3d6 plus your modifier, so... what about lightning bolt? magic missile? wait a second, how come all my spells have the same attack values and damage modifiers? what? it's because it's all a function of my implement? so... if my wand is a +2 wand, and my INT modifier is +5, then ALL my spells will have an attack of +9 damage of +5? that's IT? sure, it's easy to remember, but what exactly is the point? can I find an edge
anywhere?
No, I suppose not. What a disappointment. In fact, by the time our big combat was done, I felt nothing at all except that all characters are so well "balanced" that they were completely interchangeable.
Everything anyone did ended up with the same end result, delivered by different box texts. And I think that summarizes 4th edition pretty well in general.
I will not play 4th edition again, nor will I run it. And I mourn future generations of kids who will be taught this as "D&D", because I predict that in the long run D&D is destined to become a dying breed, for they have murdered its soul. I did learn one very valuable thing yesterday - I had never credited the D&D system itself enough, always focusing on the role-playing aspect of the game. Now I know better. Because what I experienced yesterday reminded me of just how useful all these strange little mechanics are in translating the danger and excitement and sense of wonder and helplessness and magic and curiosity from our minds onto a workable social experience. And if you take away this engine - the engine that supports this translation from imagination into dramatization - then you end up losing the purpose of the game. And I suppose that it was worth 12 hours of my life, between character creation and the play session, to learn this lesson.
