The new iteration of the Dungeons & Dragons rules comes out tomorrow. I’m looking forward to them, and have already gathered a small
group of friends to do a quick online adventure in the format of the other
online campaigns I’ve been participating in, The Corruption of Azim and The Salvation of Jenoa, which I'm very much enjoying. It's like group novel-writing. For this short adventure, we’ll be part of the beta test of this first iteration of the 5th edition (?) rules.
The two campaigns that I do participate in use the D&D
3.5 edition rules. There are always rules and things to quibble with in every
iteration of every game (okay, maybe not chess), but overall I vastly prefer
the 3.5 edition rules to the 4th edition ones. Why?
D&D 4E is a video game, plain and simple. They
streamlined some of the rules, and that was okay, but they streamlined combat
and made the game much more combat or challenge-centric. And you know what,
that’s not what D&D is about. It’s not about the combat or the challenges.
It’s about story.
Vin Diesel here talks about how D&D is more about using
your imagination than about just getting to the next monster.
It's about the ability to take a few rulebooks, some dice, and pencils and paper and creating entire worlds in your imagination with your friends. And it's not just that the worlds are cool and interesting and fun. It's that you get to practice the discipline of wonder and of imagination that you get from books or stories. TV, Movies, and Video games are awesome, but it's just not the same. It's one of the reasons why I will definitely try to get my kids to play it (with less adult themes than my current campaigns, which I would rate PG-13) instead of buying them an Xbox.
Like my nephew, Alex, here playing with my D&D Dice.
In my campaigns, the emotional involvement of the players is also a high priority. I receive no higher compliment than the fact that one of the players felt like he had been punched in the gut when I made a folk hero of his people into a fallen paladin-an evil blackguard. Or when another player said that his character is deeply frustrated because of how a certain trial was decided. Getting the players emotionally involved is important, and that isn’t just about how many hitpoints the bad guy has or whether you’ve used your daily power yet or not.
Like my nephew, Alex, here playing with my D&D Dice.
In my campaigns, the emotional involvement of the players is also a high priority. I receive no higher compliment than the fact that one of the players felt like he had been punched in the gut when I made a folk hero of his people into a fallen paladin-an evil blackguard. Or when another player said that his character is deeply frustrated because of how a certain trial was decided. Getting the players emotionally involved is important, and that isn’t just about how many hitpoints the bad guy has or whether you’ve used your daily power yet or not.
In the campaign where I am a player, it’s really fun to play
the bad guys. Chris, a friend of mine, wasn’t contributing as much as he
wanted, so we had to write his characters out. It was really too bad, because
he had such an interesting story about the betrayed Lord Tyrus of Eridor who
had turned against the king because his fiancé, Veena, had been killed after
the king promised her to a neighboring Baron whose lands the king wanted. The
DM was pretty clever about how to write the characters out. Tyrus’ new wife,
Shandra ended up being kidnapped by slavers, and Tyrus ran off to try to save
her (after being bitten by a werewolf!). We didn’t know what had happened to
them.
Fast forward a few months in the game. There was a moment
when we, the bad guys (so fun to play bad guys for a change), charge into the
room to save Baron Goldhammer, the mayor of Coppermine Ridge. This is the same
Baron that Tyrus’ fiancé had been given to by the imperialistic King Heron. You
see, the Baron needs to die, but not yet, and someone is out to get him. So we
need to save him in order to kill him later at the right time.
We show up at the Baron’s offices and there are corpses
everywhere. Worried that we are too late we rush into his personal office to
find . . . Tyrus, standing there with two demons at his side, holding the
bloody and beaten (but not dead) Baron aloft in his hands. Blood dripping from
his gauntlets and sword, Tyrus screams out, telepathically.
It's your fault she's dead! Veena never loved you. You
conspired with King Heron to take away what was rightfully mine! You didn't
fight in that war, bleeding and watching your friends die around you! Did you
think your riches could buy her love? Did you think you could make her care for
a greedy, traitorous snake like you?!
What is Tyrus doing there? Where is
Shandra? Was he successful in rescuing her? Is she dead? Is he a werewolf? Is
the Baron dead? Why is Tyrus speaking telepathically (he didn’t have that
ability before)? Will we have to fight our friend? If Shandra is alive and we
kill him, what will we say to her if we ever run into her again? If the Baron
is dead, will that ruin our plans?
I remember my exact response. “Holy crap!”
I remember Adam’s exact response. “Holy
crap!” (Adam is the other player in the campaign aside from Susan.)
That, my friends, is what Dungeons and
Dragons is all about. Story. Not challenges. Not combat. Not loot. Story. If I
want the other things, I’ll reactive my World of WarCraft account.
Here’s hoping the new rules are about facilitating good storytelling. We'll find out tomorrow.
Here’s hoping the new rules are about facilitating good storytelling. We'll find out tomorrow.
2 comments:
As you know, I disagree with your assessment of 4th edition, and I think you may be overlooking some advancements it made separate from the powers, and 'video-gamey' feeling you get. RPG's will always be about story. Some of those advancements for your perusal:
- Better writing overall. This may be a personal one, but I found it more straight-forward
- Simplified alignment
- Personality Profile (which I have used for several other games to flesh out characters)
- Gaining max HP means instead of getting a crap roll helps magic users and those with a lower 'Hit Die' be ready for fights
- Higher starting HP in general means one hit isn't going to take you out of the game in they early levels.
- Replacing feats with the option of retraining them lets you mold your character as you level.
- 30 levels instead of 20 mean rewards more often.
- New levels you always get something cool, whether it's a stat bonus, a feat, a new power, levels overall just felt more robust.
- +1 to two stats is much better. Feels like you are actually getting something, rather than waiting 6 levels to get that one stat up.
- Simplified skill list means I don't need separate Search, Spot, and Listen skills.
- More powerful races w/ special abilities instead of just a random +1/-1. Races actually help define you.
- More balanced classes (I know this is what some players don't like, but it IS much more balanced, which can be restricting, something I'm hoping 5E addresses.)
- Everyone has powers now. For some reason, I know you think this is bad. I think that if it had significantly less magic-like abilities like 'once a day' etc, and it moved this into feats, this would be less of a problem, but martial classes need options too. Although they may just 'Hit Stuff', How they do so can be vastly different: Do they sacrifice to to-hit in order to do more damage? Use finesse (Dex) instead of strength? Have a personal expertise at defense with a certain weapon? I think all of these should be options, probably defined by feats, but they should be options. The thing I like about 4E is that it gives martial classes as much option to customize their characters as it does magic classes, without waiting another 3 levels for your next feat.
- Not all, but some of the utility powers let you do cool things other than combat, which helped the story, like breaking locks, or being able to jump extra far.
- Less charts, more simple (Not talking about powers here)
That's not to say that 4E didn't have it's problems:
- Healing Surges: I always hated this idea.
- Locked in Mechanics for magic classes removes a LOT of the imaginative solutions from the game: like using a mount spell to drop an elephant on someone.
- A little TOO power-centric.
I think that each edition has some good ideas, but to throw 4E out entirely? I think that's stretching things.
So I'm currently discovering RPGs 'Chris style'. While I'm not a huge D&D player yet (we've done a white wolf vampire requiem story and are starting a new heavy gear [which I'm super stoked about!]), I feel that while your assessment that it's all about story and emotional involvement is completely true (since I'm a story addict), I like having clear rules for combat and some characters enjoy that. It's fun getting to level up according to rules, even when it's frustrating sometimes. And changing rules (within fair reason) as you see fit for a specific game is an understandable power of a GM. So while I agree, I can also understand where they'd come from making it a bit more about combat. It's our job to make the story and rich characters, they'll just give us the tools to kick..butt! Thanks for your post, I do love reading your blog.
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