by Andy Woodyard
It’s a new system, to fix all the little bugs of 3rd Edition, but now all your old 3rd Edition books are outdated, and the Campaign Settings you loved have been nerfed. Welcome to good, the bad, and the ugly of 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the new system, and I feel it solves so many problems from 3.0 – 3.5, but there are a lot of players out there that were insulted that a new system came out so soon (after only eight years), and have since completely quit playing D&D. At the same time the game is attracting new players who love the simplified rules.
Since the new system came out I’ve run three short campaigns with numerous players. Most players love the diversity of the classes, and the idea that every year at least eight new classes will be introduced for them to play, thus preventing them from becoming bored with the basic classes. The simplified rules regarding attack bonuses, saving throws, and skills also make it so much easier to introduce the game.
At the same time many old players despise the similarity to World of Warcraft, the initial lack of classes (I’m still waiting for the monk to come back personally), and how certain classes have been diminished to the point where they lost all their flavor and originality (by that I mean wizards, who lost all aspects of specialization, and essentially have become war mages, being forced to use mostly flashy attack spells, verses the old variety of subtle manipulative spells, that made the class fun.) On top of that I’ve noticed how much the roles (Defender, Striker, Controller/Leader) have effected the game, especially when people bring a new character in. Groups seem to favor more Controllers, and Strikers, as there aren’t many Defender classes even now with a second player’s handbook out.
Then there’s Forgotten Realms, which some of my players have dubbed ‘F****d Up Realm’, since Abeir and Toril suddenly became two worlds that are now merged together. The thing I loved about Forgotten Realms was the small details: the little unique towns in the middle of nowhere (thank you Ed Greenwood), various guilds and cabals in each region, and the various regions themselves to explore. With the new edition large portions of the realms have been completely destroyed to clean the world, or simply forgotten (what ever happened to Kara-Tur, and Zakhara?). Personally destroying Maztica, and replacing it with a new continent of Dragonborn was the straw the broke the camels back. I know DM’s who run F.R. campaigns where none of that ever happened, and the name Dragonborn is forbidden – not to be uttered on pain of character death.
On the bright side it’s fun to see what has happened to the Realms over the last hundred years, and it does allow DM’s who use campaigns set in the past to experience world changing events with their players (the spell plague is still seven years away in my campaign, but it is coming). In some cases I can see how removing regions that don’t match with the rest of the realms (such as Mulhorand) needed to be removed, and destroying a lot of places (like Lantan) gives the DM the opportunity to run a whole new set of treasure hunting campaigns. In addition the idea of Earthmotes, the Plaguelands, and the Regional Benefits packages are some of the better new ideas in 4th Edition Forgotten Realms, that I’ve included in my own campaign.
Overall, there is good and bad and ugly things in the new system. In many cases they fixed so many problems, but ended up fixing things that weren’t broken (like Forgotten Realms). I still have long term players who have barely touched, or who won‘t even try, 4th Edition. I’m personally waiting for the ‘Return Abeir to where it belongs’ epic book adventure to come out, and fix what the designers broke, but it may be a long while. Until then I’m playing 4th Edition, using a lot of older reference books (both 2nd Edition and 3rd) to add more life to my campaign as I always have, making the world my own.
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