By Merin –
November 20, 2009Posted in: Check It Out!, News, Reviews & Such
About the Author

Jim Yoho is the owner of In Genre, Wausau Comics, and JAY Entertainment and he maintains the site as well as adding the occasional article or review of his own. He often goes by Merin online, from way back in the BBS days of dial-up modems even.
Having enjoyed writing reviews and postings for other sites he decided to start his own where he combined his creative urges to write and create web comics (such as Episode Fun and Alistair & Arthur) with his long-held desire to bring together and organize talented people for joint projects. The end result is that you get the Wausau Comics site - articles and reviews of genre entertainment at In Genre plus some web comics and links to the works of other Contributors, too!
I just can’t get into D&D 4th Ed. A friend of mine told me that really it’s about the roleplaying and you can do that with any game. But I just feel 4th Ed doesn’t really do much to support roleplaying. It’s like TSR, sorry I mean Wizards, is trying to compete with WOW by making a book game like it.
I was really big into D&D back during Basic edition, Advanced 1st & 2nd.
Then I fell out of playing for awhile just before WotC came and turned D&D into Magic the Gathering (see, all those 3rd ED fans who complain about 4th ED being an MMO either forget or didn’t realize that D&D got “CCG’d” when bought by the kings of CCGs) the RPG.
When I came back to playing I really wasn’t having fun. Part of it, I’m sure, were the players I hooked up with. But a good part of it was the design of the game. I couldn’t even enjoy Neverwinter Nights due at least partially to the ruleset.
I clearly see the MMO influence on 4th ED, but it takes the good things from MMO’s (class balance, quick healings, magic items that cannot overpowering PCs) and leaves the bad (camping, OOC idiots breaking your RP mood online, boring and repetitious grind of leveling and crafting.)
As for the RP aspect, that is really something you bring yourself. If you go back to any previous edition of D&D, nowhere in the PHB nor DMG does it really cover “role-playing” a character – later supplements always dealt with that. As does 4th ED – the DMG 2 is awesome, and the Powers books really delve into how the different classes act different and gives great RP tips for designing and acting out your characters.
4th ED books are so much better designed – easy to read, easy to reference – seriously, if you weren’t used to 3rd ED books and first cracked them open the small text, odd fonts and often non-white backgrounds cause serious eyestrain.
I think the hardcore 3.5 players really like the ridiculous amounts of options that comes from over 5 years of books being published (possibly many of them having first played D&D in 3.5 and not used to new editions coming out every decade or less), and many who like to min-max LOVE how you can build a killer character that is worlds better than other characters at same level. You can’t do that in 4th ED, and that sticks with some people.