Saturday, August 25, 2007

Dungeons & Dragons - 4th Edition Released

My favourite game, Dungeons & Dragons has just re-released its core rules to move into 4th Edition.

This of course after I just outlayed $80 for the 3.5 edition (a major update to the 3rd Ed books) about 2 months ago.

Early views are that the game can now be played online by subscription utilising special applications via the Net but also the rules have been really shifted.

My perusing of the various D&D messageboards is that people are annoyed / worried about the rule changes and the focus on technology, and others are really excited... I think that there are more people in the former category than the latter.

If you're a D&D player, what are your thoughts? I am a bit bemused at the moment...

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'll reserve any final judgement until I see the rules... but my initial reaction has been this:

1) I'm not pissed that there is 4th edition, or even that there will be a 5th, 6th, etc... It's a publishing company, they need to make new books, new editions to make money. No one should be surprised that they change things every few years to insure profitability.

2) The new Star Wars rules (which 4th ed is similar too) are very well done. I just finished reading them, and they have streamlined several aspects of the game which used to slow down the "fun" at the table.. I like role-playing, not roll-playing, and less rules arguments at the table is always welcome to me, because anything that keeps the story flowing is a good thing.

3) However, that all being said, I am very worried that Hasbro, the parent company of D&D is looking at games like Everquest and World of Warcraft with dollarsigns in their eyes. The online focus, and monthly subscription model really worries me. If I want to play a video game (and I play plenty) then I'll play a video game. I play D&D because it is a TABLEtop game... I don't want it to be just another version of the latest MMORPG.

STOP THE VIDEO-GAMIFICATION OF D&D!!!

I love the game as it is, improving it is fine, but don't try to make it something it is not.

But again, I'll wait and see what the rules look like before I condemn/praise anybody...

Dan said...

My main worry (Hi, by the way!) is how many times will we need to fork out for the core-rule-books? Once per new version? We did it for 3e, then 3.5, and now in less than a year, 4e?

I agree with the previous comment - Wizards are looking at the online games drawing in the mega-bucks and thinking "we can get a bit of that pie".

They said you won't be able to directly convert existing characters - which seems odd. They're also going to re-release the world books, and no doubt they'll do the big adventures over again.

But - as I said in my blog this morning - you can bet we'll still end up getting it, because our group will slowly shift over to it, and it's a case of change or your group falls apart.

Ho hum, guess we'll just have to wait and see in the long run.