I Know This Sounds Really Geeky But...

[Zinovia]

/delurk

All the computer RPG's owe a huge debt to Gary Gygax and Dungeons & Dragons. I've been involved in a 3rd edition D&D campaign for over 4 years now; the rules changed substantially from AD&D back in the day (25 years ago when I first played). And yes, I'm a geek. If running science fiction conventions and playing MMO's didn't already prove that, I'm not sure what would.

If anyone is interested, WotC is in the process of doing a major rules re-write now for 4th edition. They are taking some ideas from the MMO's, such as defined class roles, in order to help make the classes distinct from each other and to help people newer to the game build a balanced party. The roles will be Defender (tank), Striker (DPS), Controller (CC and utility spells), and Leader (healing, group buffs). Despite their roles, all the classes are supposed to have something useful to do in combat, unlike current editions where the wizard sits around twiddling his thumbs once he's run out of spells for the day.

Needless to say the changes are favored by some people, and totally opposed by others. The rules come out in June, so we'll have to see what the game is like. It should be easier to learn and more fun to play if they did it right. So far the reviews from playtesters has been very positive. For info the best site to read is ENWorld. There's a bunch of stuff about online tools and such, but a lot of that isn't being done for the Mac. I'm only interested in the books myself.

/lurk on

[Kyth]

So far the reviews from playtesters has been very positive.

Not all of them :/. Maybe all the published ones.

My bf is playtesting it and I'm not sure what I can say due to NDA's, but a good summary is that he feels it takes way too much from WoW-style play and is too simplistic.

[Zinovia]

Given that I don't live in Seattle or know anyone at WotC, I haven't had a chance to play the new edition. Everything I know about it has been from online info published on the WotC site or on ENworld. When i said the reviews were mostly positive, it was in reference to various people not affiliated with WotC who have published reviews on the net. I don't have access to any other data. Certainly there are a lot of haters out there on ENWorld in particular, but most of them are operating with the same lack of information that the rest of us have.

AICN Massawyrm review part 1
AICN Massawyrm review part 2
AICN Massawyrm review part 3

I don't think the new rules are necessarily going to be perfect. I'm concerned about a number of issues with the rules changes. Oversimplification wasn't one of them, except in the area of character skills. I didn't have a problem with point-buy on skills, and I'm not sure I'll like the new system. Combat sounds like it will have plenty of complexity and many status modifiers to keep track of. The diagonal movement issue isn't one for us, because we use a hex grid. I do worry that the rules won't have been playtested enough and there will be a lot of errata published in the months following release.

It's still "wait and see" at this point. I want to like it. To me 3rd edition was a big reduction in complexity compared to Rolemaster, which we played for many years. Perhaps this will take it too far. Perhaps it will be just the thing we needed for some of our less experienced players who aren't having fun with the current combat system. I still don't think it will feel too much like WoW, given that WoW has zero, zip, zilch in the way of roleplaying and social encounters. In previous editions everyone knew that to build a balanced party, you needed a rogue, cleric, fighter or paladin, and a wizard. Hopefully there will be more alternatives in 4E, and they are just being labeled with class roles - but those roles were always there. The mechanics just weren't as transparent.

I just have to wait until I can get my hands on the preview adventure in May to find out if I'll like it or not. At least my group has agreed to playtest it.

[Nikolai]

I got my copy of The Economist this morning, and their weekly featured Obituary (every week, they select one prominent passing for a tribute) was Gary Gygax.