Why I'm not buying the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons anytime soon

[cnoocy]

I'm not a hardcore gamer. I'm an enthusiastic player of pencil-and-paper role-playing games, but I've probably played or run less that a dozen different systems. I like computer role-playing games, but generally only when played as a group, with multiple people in the same room. One thing I have never been able to get into is online role-playing games. I've had accounts on LambdaMOO and Second Life, but I haven't really done anything with them. It's the talking to strangers that does it, I think. I'm not good at striking up a conversation, especially if I don't have any information about the person. (Though I am only marginally better at doing this in person.) So instead of getting into World of Warcraft and EverQuest over the last few years, I've continued playing Dungeons and Dragons.

You know how a lot of people have been reading the 4th edition rules and saying "this makes me want to get out my dice and play again"? I had that reaction years ago with 3rd edition. And I've been playing since. I've been playing with friends while, it seems, all the famous people have been abandoning pencil and paper to do their gaming online. I don't have a problem with that. I think it's great that there's this new type of gaming developing. But it does mean that while a lot of people see the elements from World of Warcraft in 4th edition as two great tastes that taste great together, to me it looks like they're changing the formula for Coke so that it tastes more like Pepsi.

Note: This was set off by Eric Burns's post on the subject, though I don't have a disagreement other than personal preference with what he says there.

Comments

[servant-of-clio.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. Get your MMO out of my P&P! Curtis is buying the 4th ed. books to crib ideas from, but we'll continue to play with a homebrew based on 3rd ed.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

Somehow the more I hear about this the more it feels like D&D 3 is Perl and D&D 4 is Python.

[lemurtanis.livejournal.com]

I never understand why this makes people cranky. :) They're very different games, but folks seem to feel compelled to declare that they love/hate 4th edition. Would you write a post about how you're not buying Pepsi anytime soon?

[lapak.livejournal.com]

I picked up the 4th edition rulebooks, and I've got to say this: it isn't WoW. Or any MMO, for that matter. There are a lot of complaints to be made about the new edition - the absence of bards and druids from the initial release makes the top of my list, for example - but 'it's now like computer RPGs' is not one of them. You've inspired me to put up a longer post on my own account to talk about it; it's a little much for comment-length.

It *is* very different from 1-2-3E; so different that it's essentially a different game. But that game is really very little like computer RPGs and MMOGs aside from surface similarities.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

We're planning to introduce Tani to D&D this summer. I take it you're saying we should buy all the third edition books we can get our hands on now. (Or stick with the first edition books in the attic that would have become worth 1000GP if only I'd played with them less. :-)