4th Edition D&D & YouTube Madness!
Aug. 29th, 2007 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaHi guys, I've been a horrible LJer lately. Partly because I've been busy and/or elsewhere (went home for the weekend) and partly I just haven't really had anything to say/the heart for it. I partly blame hiatus fever. No BSG, no Heroes, not even any Doctor Who. And most of my roleplay games have slowed because Danny disappeared for a month and people have been busy. *sigh*
But anyway, there has been some roleplaying news in the industry. Wizards of the Coast are publishing Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. My initial reaction was OH DEAR GOD, MY EYES, MY EYES!
I'm...well I guess on some level I am against 4th edition on principle. But I'd like to think I can at least be dispassionate enough to recognise that making money is a necessity in the industry and that all things change in time.
That said, the blatancy with which Wi$ards are money-grubbing here is shocking. A new set of the three core rulebooks with new/different stuff every year? That's unnecessary and clearly only being done because they tried churning out a million sourcebooks for essentially identical ideas, and people didn't buy them. This is a cheap trick to make it seem like an "essential purchase." That's seventy odd quid ANNUALLY. Maybe it doesn't seem like so much, but it's a lot to me. It's a lot to the kids who play the game.
That was always the strength of RPGs for me; a whole game in a book. Endless adventure and fun in one book. And in other books too if you wanted them or if you could afford them.
And I know people have to make money, and they're competing against the wargame market and the collectable card game market and the miniatures market. But guess what - they've GOT their own miniatures that are doing great. Do they have to fundamentally change the nature of my hobby too?
But that's okay. Because I had a revelation. Dungeons & Dragons is not a role-playing game. At times (3rd edition especially, and by virtue of it's similarity to 3rd, 3.5) it came pretty close. And role-play games as they stand today owe their existance to the guy who thought, hey, we don't need miniatures for these games, and we don't need computers. Tabletop roleplay owes its existence to D&D. But then again, D&D owes its existence to wargaming but D&D isn't really a wargame.
I've read...pages now of quotes and official release stuff forwarded to me by Kev and not once have the words, "roleplaying game," been used. Not. Once.
I could go on about the way they're removing the customisation for the sake of "streamlining" and "simplifying" when we coped with the complications just fine. And about how there's nothing wrong with their anime-inspired abilities except an ever increasing need to codify and legislate exactly what constitutes an 'encounter' and exactly how many you ought to have a day and the need to know exactly what your opponents hit points are, and the way it'll further pigeon-hole classes into set roles - the death of parties such as ours where the chief meat-shield combat-monster is the wizard, the chief rogue is the fighter and the chief silver-tongued trickster or the main line of strong combat defense is the sorceror. I could go on about all this "streamlining" does is make simpler but ultimately more homogenous characters. All fighters get last stand glory when they're low on health; all rogues get nasty backstabby skills when their opponents are low on health. Never mind if you want to be a vicious brute of a fighter, skilled in improvise weaponry and clocking people in alleys and you always run from a fight that's fair or if you think you might lose. Never mind if you want to be a rogue who relies on your quick wit and smart tongue to talk yourself out of situations, or perhaps just a genuinely nice Robin Hood guy who's not going to turn down the ability to kill someone quickly and quietly but might not like a lot of his primary combat abilities being predicated on kicking someone when they're down. It's an illusion of greater simplicity when really all you have is less room for making shit up yourself, more space for rules lawyering and nifty abilities that will have the anime fans drooling and failing to notice it removes stylistic choice.
I could go on about all that. And in fact, I just did, though not nearly at as much length as I could. But I think what galls me most is:
1. The constant way they tear down the last edition to big-up this one. If it were even slightly more subtle I could maybe handle it. But everything that gets posted is, literally, "Last version was shit at this, how could we ever have lived with it! It was insane! Luckily this version has fixed EEEEEVERYTHING!!" When 3rd came out at least they had the decency to say things like, "Thanks to the strong foundations of the previous edition." This time, you'd think all the previous edition did was drag them down a back alley and rape them. And us too. Though they still seem to want us to pay for the upcoming 3.5 releases through the end of the year.
2. The insane way they keep claiming to have invented the wheel. Or suddenly allowed the use of imagination through some of their bizarre inventions. Like in a discussion about the way they've now broken all the classes down into "primary roles" within the party (another thing that again swings away from the wonderful customisational options afforded by 3.0) and how when all the "defenders" (i.e. fighters, barbarians, paladins, etc.) were out for the count, one of the writers had his thief take up the "defender" role and lead the monsters on a chase around the area to keep them away from the other characters. AS IF THIS WEREN'T POSSIBLE BEFORE! As if, in a game where the whole POINT is you can do anything you like, NO ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF ACTING AS A DECOY. Oh - or their new "social combat" rules (WTF?!) which apparently "allow" games masters to include non-combat challenges in their games. Again, I ask you, WTF?! Oh - and one example of this in playtesting was...convincing a Lich to side with you against a Dragon, then after defeating the Dragon the Lich turns on you, but at least you got to deal with them one at a time and had help to beat the Dragon. Yes, that's right guys, social challenges exist solely to further the combat. *headdesk*
3. Quote (roughly) from when 3.0 came out: "Dungeons and Dragons is primarily about creating a fun experience with a group of friends."
Quote (roughly) about 4th edition: "4th edition is about killing monsters! All the way up to level 30!"
So. Yeah.
D&D. Not a roleplaying game. Who knew. In that light, I'm quite proud of me and my group for telling unbelievable stories using it. For having whole games where no one rolled a single dice for combat in a system that even at its best was unwieldy for anything other than combat. For letting us create a shared mythology and iconic characters and even words. For breaking our hearts, and shocking us with plot twists we never saw coming, and terrifying us, and moving us, and making us angry and making us laugh until we felt sick. For letting us play pretend again. The best sort of pretend, where all the amazing character development and action sequences, and emotional wreckage you want to explore gets explored. For letting me be the sane palandin of an insane god, and a girl caught in the undertow of someone else's prophecy, and the weakest of Caine's children burning in the sun, and the woman who gave half her soul to her devil self, and, and, and...
For giving me and my friends control over the characters we love most, not TV companies and distant writers we'll never meet. That's why I love roleplaying. It's the story. It's as addictive as writing, except, when you get the right group of people, the story you make is better and bigger than the cliched sum of its parts.
Forgive me for waxing lyrical; it's a topic I tend to get passionate about. Which is why I'm being indulgent and posting this outside a cut.
A while ago now - the inspired![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
asta77 made a Happy Moments YouTube Post and it was awesome. I wanted to copy-cat but somehow it passed me by. So, I'm catching up now!
I'm trying not to post stuff I've YouTubed here before, but forgive me if I do so accidentally!
Yum Yum Express! Best of Robot Chicken! I still can't watch it without getting a stitch from laughing...
And since we're on a Robot Chicken kick - you can't beat Robot Chicken vs. Star Wars. Yo Mama is so stupid she went to Bangkok to get a TIE-fighter!
Mount Rushmore Barber Shop Quartet. There are no words.
Benjamin Kenobi, Space Knight and the Revenge of the Diabolical Sith Lords from Mars!
Really, if the prequels had been like this I so would have been on board.
And likewise, I am not constantly disappointed when I remember that this isn't what the original trilogy looks like.
(Why yes, there's a lot of Star Wars in here; why do you ask?)
This should cheer anyone up! I think this woman is my hero!
This is such a beautiful advert.
And finally, who doesn't love Sailor Moon the Japanese Musical?! "Crush, crush, crush and demolish!" They just don't write lyrics like that anymore!
And really finally, forsonofgodzilla I found this at icanhastehforce
Have a great day, y'all!
But anyway, there has been some roleplaying news in the industry. Wizards of the Coast are publishing Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. My initial reaction was OH DEAR GOD, MY EYES, MY EYES!
I'm...well I guess on some level I am against 4th edition on principle. But I'd like to think I can at least be dispassionate enough to recognise that making money is a necessity in the industry and that all things change in time.
That said, the blatancy with which Wi$ards are money-grubbing here is shocking. A new set of the three core rulebooks with new/different stuff every year? That's unnecessary and clearly only being done because they tried churning out a million sourcebooks for essentially identical ideas, and people didn't buy them. This is a cheap trick to make it seem like an "essential purchase." That's seventy odd quid ANNUALLY. Maybe it doesn't seem like so much, but it's a lot to me. It's a lot to the kids who play the game.
That was always the strength of RPGs for me; a whole game in a book. Endless adventure and fun in one book. And in other books too if you wanted them or if you could afford them.
And I know people have to make money, and they're competing against the wargame market and the collectable card game market and the miniatures market. But guess what - they've GOT their own miniatures that are doing great. Do they have to fundamentally change the nature of my hobby too?
But that's okay. Because I had a revelation. Dungeons & Dragons is not a role-playing game. At times (3rd edition especially, and by virtue of it's similarity to 3rd, 3.5) it came pretty close. And role-play games as they stand today owe their existance to the guy who thought, hey, we don't need miniatures for these games, and we don't need computers. Tabletop roleplay owes its existence to D&D. But then again, D&D owes its existence to wargaming but D&D isn't really a wargame.
I've read...pages now of quotes and official release stuff forwarded to me by Kev and not once have the words, "roleplaying game," been used. Not. Once.
I could go on about the way they're removing the customisation for the sake of "streamlining" and "simplifying" when we coped with the complications just fine. And about how there's nothing wrong with their anime-inspired abilities except an ever increasing need to codify and legislate exactly what constitutes an 'encounter' and exactly how many you ought to have a day and the need to know exactly what your opponents hit points are, and the way it'll further pigeon-hole classes into set roles - the death of parties such as ours where the chief meat-shield combat-monster is the wizard, the chief rogue is the fighter and the chief silver-tongued trickster or the main line of strong combat defense is the sorceror. I could go on about all this "streamlining" does is make simpler but ultimately more homogenous characters. All fighters get last stand glory when they're low on health; all rogues get nasty backstabby skills when their opponents are low on health. Never mind if you want to be a vicious brute of a fighter, skilled in improvise weaponry and clocking people in alleys and you always run from a fight that's fair or if you think you might lose. Never mind if you want to be a rogue who relies on your quick wit and smart tongue to talk yourself out of situations, or perhaps just a genuinely nice Robin Hood guy who's not going to turn down the ability to kill someone quickly and quietly but might not like a lot of his primary combat abilities being predicated on kicking someone when they're down. It's an illusion of greater simplicity when really all you have is less room for making shit up yourself, more space for rules lawyering and nifty abilities that will have the anime fans drooling and failing to notice it removes stylistic choice.
I could go on about all that. And in fact, I just did, though not nearly at as much length as I could. But I think what galls me most is:
1. The constant way they tear down the last edition to big-up this one. If it were even slightly more subtle I could maybe handle it. But everything that gets posted is, literally, "Last version was shit at this, how could we ever have lived with it! It was insane! Luckily this version has fixed EEEEEVERYTHING!!" When 3rd came out at least they had the decency to say things like, "Thanks to the strong foundations of the previous edition." This time, you'd think all the previous edition did was drag them down a back alley and rape them. And us too. Though they still seem to want us to pay for the upcoming 3.5 releases through the end of the year.
2. The insane way they keep claiming to have invented the wheel. Or suddenly allowed the use of imagination through some of their bizarre inventions. Like in a discussion about the way they've now broken all the classes down into "primary roles" within the party (another thing that again swings away from the wonderful customisational options afforded by 3.0) and how when all the "defenders" (i.e. fighters, barbarians, paladins, etc.) were out for the count, one of the writers had his thief take up the "defender" role and lead the monsters on a chase around the area to keep them away from the other characters. AS IF THIS WEREN'T POSSIBLE BEFORE! As if, in a game where the whole POINT is you can do anything you like, NO ONE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF ACTING AS A DECOY. Oh - or their new "social combat" rules (WTF?!) which apparently "allow" games masters to include non-combat challenges in their games. Again, I ask you, WTF?! Oh - and one example of this in playtesting was...convincing a Lich to side with you against a Dragon, then after defeating the Dragon the Lich turns on you, but at least you got to deal with them one at a time and had help to beat the Dragon. Yes, that's right guys, social challenges exist solely to further the combat. *headdesk*
3. Quote (roughly) from when 3.0 came out: "Dungeons and Dragons is primarily about creating a fun experience with a group of friends."
Quote (roughly) about 4th edition: "4th edition is about killing monsters! All the way up to level 30!"
So. Yeah.
D&D. Not a roleplaying game. Who knew. In that light, I'm quite proud of me and my group for telling unbelievable stories using it. For having whole games where no one rolled a single dice for combat in a system that even at its best was unwieldy for anything other than combat. For letting us create a shared mythology and iconic characters and even words. For breaking our hearts, and shocking us with plot twists we never saw coming, and terrifying us, and moving us, and making us angry and making us laugh until we felt sick. For letting us play pretend again. The best sort of pretend, where all the amazing character development and action sequences, and emotional wreckage you want to explore gets explored. For letting me be the sane palandin of an insane god, and a girl caught in the undertow of someone else's prophecy, and the weakest of Caine's children burning in the sun, and the woman who gave half her soul to her devil self, and, and, and...
For giving me and my friends control over the characters we love most, not TV companies and distant writers we'll never meet. That's why I love roleplaying. It's the story. It's as addictive as writing, except, when you get the right group of people, the story you make is better and bigger than the cliched sum of its parts.
Forgive me for waxing lyrical; it's a topic I tend to get passionate about. Which is why I'm being indulgent and posting this outside a cut.
A while ago now - the inspired
asta77 made a Happy Moments YouTube Post and it was awesome. I wanted to copy-cat but somehow it passed me by. So, I'm catching up now! I'm trying not to post stuff I've YouTubed here before, but forgive me if I do so accidentally!
Yum Yum Express! Best of Robot Chicken! I still can't watch it without getting a stitch from laughing...
And since we're on a Robot Chicken kick - you can't beat Robot Chicken vs. Star Wars. Yo Mama is so stupid she went to Bangkok to get a TIE-fighter!
Mount Rushmore Barber Shop Quartet. There are no words.
Benjamin Kenobi, Space Knight and the Revenge of the Diabolical Sith Lords from Mars!
Really, if the prequels had been like this I so would have been on board.
And likewise, I am not constantly disappointed when I remember that this isn't what the original trilogy looks like.
(Why yes, there's a lot of Star Wars in here; why do you ask?)
This should cheer anyone up! I think this woman is my hero!
This is such a beautiful advert.
And finally, who doesn't love Sailor Moon the Japanese Musical?! "Crush, crush, crush and demolish!" They just don't write lyrics like that anymore!
And really finally, for
sonofgodzilla I found this at icanhastehforceHave a great day, y'all!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 05:26 pm (UTC)It would be a great demonstration of responsible journalism and also, it would be goddamn hilarious!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 05:27 pm (UTC)Plus - w00t for rpgers on my flist!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-29 10:16 pm (UTC)YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
That is awesome!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 05:28 pm (UTC)Actually, *I* care...
Date: 2007-08-30 08:41 am (UTC)And now they've done it again? Sigh... it's those Wizards of the Coast bastards. Since they bought out TSR they've fucked everything up. Well done. Your sales figures are up, your product line is expanding. But where's the love, dudes? Where's the magic?
*cries*
Re: Actually, *I* care...
Date: 2007-08-30 10:03 am (UTC)with all the bad stuff, im surprised they havent renamed it D&D 95, or ME. or even vista, for smegs sake...
Re: Actually, *I* care...
Date: 2007-08-30 05:37 pm (UTC)Honestly? I think it's going to end up like most Microsoft OS new releases; clunky and virus-prone with a very shiny exterior.
Re: Actually, *I* care...
Date: 2007-08-30 05:35 pm (UTC)Actually, I really like 3rd ed because of the great character customisation and improvement because that's really what I game for (not so much 3.5, all they changed were changes away from what I liked). But then again, I started during the White Wolf glory days of the nineties when - please don't hurt me! - 2nd ed wasn't really very...alive and 3rd hadn't been released yet. So I never experienced the loss of any of the better aspects of AD&D.
But I'm really with you on the complication factor. I don't MIND it. I like quick simple in-play rules but that's just a matter of familiarity. And I don't want to lose the chance to customise my character for it either!
I think it's because they have unreasonable expectations about how much of their books they're going to sell and how many supplements people will buy to the point they start releasing trash just to fill up their release schdedule. So when they finally run out of ideas? They just overhaul a totally new edition. For the cash. Bastards.
TSR might have made some screwy business decisions and doomed themselves financially - like publishing all their stuff in boxes - but at least they were decisions that stemmed from a love of the game rather than working out if the Player's Handbook II will actually sell...
And they CANCELLED DUNGEON MAGAZINE AND DRAGON MAGAZINE! I'm kind of unofficially boycotting their products now.
But you know what? THEY CAN'T MAKE US UPDATE! To quote the Firefly Theme Song: You can't take
the skyAD&D from me!