4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

At this point, Wizards of the Coast has finally lost me as they continue to push out more extraneous materials and ideas in order to push for strained continuity within an otherwise weak and ill-conceived theme. The monk and the psion classes were completely expected since they fit the bill for iconic classes that have made appearances in previous editions in the game in one form or another. The Seeker, although a bit of a stretch to make it fit the concept, at least fills the void of the martial controller which has been missing since the original release of the game. But now the “Ardent” and the “Battlemind”? Surely, we’ve lost sight of something along the way.

First of all, the name “Ardent” doesn’t sound either appropriate or iconic. And “Battlemind”...? As in “I’m playing an elf battlemind!” What?! I’m sorry, but I don’t need anymore bloat in my game. At least not this early in it’s current incarnation. This stick of gum is quickly losing all traces of flavor and I’m about ready to spit it out.

(By the way, good work on keeping up with the daily updates, BP. I don’t know how you do it, reading through the deteriorating quality being regurgitated every day and giving every bit of it a full review. I feel like spooning my eyes out almost every time I check out something new for my DDI subscription. I strongly believe that I will not be renewing it again once it runs out.)

What do you expect with an intent of releasing a full PHB every year?  It’s kind of a given that things start to be less interesting at some point.  What worries me is that we seem to be heading toward having a specific set of characters repeated in each power source.  True, the power source does influence the feel, but it seems to me that some classes are going to end up feeling like an excuse to fill a “void” that is unnecessary (or worse, just to pad out PHB 97).

I, for one will be picking up PHB 3, but reserving judgment on PHB 4.  I assume next year we will have the shadow-based fighter, the shadow-based ranger, the shadow-based cleric, etc. 

Begin sarcasm:  I doubt I will buy PHB 6, which will introduce the Knitting power source as well as the bricklayer character class, a martial defender/controller whose contribution in battle actually takes place days,weeks or even years earlier. End sarcasm.

I enjoy the game, but I think that the business model guarantees power creep, degrading quality, or both.  Oh and by the way, it’s not called “bloat” anymore.  It’s “player freedom” now… at least that’s my guess for what WoTC would call it.

Right now there are 24 classes, about 3 years into 4e’s publishing life.  Compare that to the over 50 that were released under 3.5. Given that 3.5 had a 5 year publishing life (June 2003 to June 2008), we’re on the same pace, if not a bit slower, in 4e.

I think what makes it seem worse in this edition are two things:

1) The release of multiple PHBs.  Calling a book PH# gives us a very salient reminder of just how much material has been released.  In 3.5 we didn’t get that reminder because every book had a different name.

2) The codification of roles.  In 4e it’s easy to tell which class is the “figher” (i.e. defender) for a particular power source and which is the “cleric” (i.e. leader) because the class description tells you straight up.  3.5 had no such explicit guide, though the classes did end up filling those kinds of niches.  As a result, the reader was less likely to see a new class as a “re-skinned fighter” or whatever.

As for PH4 and beyond, we know that WotC has plans for a Shadow power source (already started with the Assassin) and have heard rumors of an Elemental power source.  One or both of those will be in the PH4 and may again appear in the PH5.  After that, however, I’m not sure we’ll necessarily continue to see the development of power sources.  WotC has continually said that they want any developed power source to have a story to justify its existence.  That’s why the Ki power source got canned, after all: it didn’t have that story.  Once Shadow and Elemental get detailed, we probably will see the contents of the PHs (if they continue) shift from new classes to something else.

What does comparing this edition to 3.5 mean to me? It means the mistakes of the past are likely to be repeated in the near future. Sorry BP, but I didn’t like what they were doing then, which means I have less reason to like it when they’re doing it now. I strongly believe that the game does not need 50+ base classes with a continuous supply of builds and options to make it playable. That’s just a misguided attempt to keep a product viable and generating money regularly day after day after day. My opinion, of course.

Your previous comment made it sound like you considered the continued publishing of base classes to be a fault of this edition specifically, so I provided the numbers to show you that 4e is no worse than 3.5 (and maybe even a bit better) in that regard.  Given that you hold the same opinion about 3.5, though, clearly said numbers don’t matter.

As for whether the game “needs” 50+ base classes to make it playable, clearly it doesn’t as games were being played when just the PHB was out.  The addition of new classes (and other elements) are an attempt by WotC to make the game more enjoyable (and yes, to make more money, they are, after all, a business).  Experience has shown WotC (and there parent company Hasbro) that the market gets bored with playing the same old thing time and again and that periodically introducing new stuff is a way to revitalize an otherwise stagnant market and to interest new players.  That’s why most every game these days comes out with expansions.  Is WotC coming out with too much stuff too quickly?  That’s debatable, but so far the market seems capable of supporting it.  Will that continue to hold or should they slow down?  Again, it’s arguable, but the last thing I think any of us want is for expansions for D&D to take as long as the expansions for Monopoly do (Original Game 1904-1935 (depending on who’s story you believe), Stock Exchange in 1936, Playmaster in 1982, Speed Die in 2007).

That’s just a misguided attempt to keep a product viable and generating money regularly day after day after day.

While I too get tired of bloat, this is not one of the reasons.  Indeed, without attempting to keep a product viable and generating interest, companies that produce intellectual property types of goods would fold completely.

The reason I don’t like bloat is because of the power creep.  I like having more options, but not when they introduce extra material which is clearly stronger than previously published material.  It creates the kind of unplayable conundrum that is railed against during the run up to the next edition.

We’re about to head into “off-topic” territory before too long but I like how this discussion is going so far.

I’m curious to know how often the average player (meaning every other gamer besides myself) starts a new character or joins a new campaign in a year. Even if I created a new character to join more long-running campaigns every month, I couldn’t possibly exhaust every race, class, and build combination available in just the first two years of books alone. Even so, I can’t imagine having enough time to play in every single campaign that I had just committed myself to during that period of time. Granted, the new direction seems to be focused more on small adventure scenarios and dungeon delves, but is that really the same game we’re talking about?

And yes, I understand that companies are in business to make money. But as usual, their strategy seems to revolve around the idea of always making more money in the here and now as opposed to creating a sustainable and viable plan for the long-haul. I’m not talking about just this class or a yearly PHB now, mind you. The campaign lines are a better example for this. Each year, they push out a new setting with 2-3 products and then drop any further support for them completely as they focus on the next year’s new hotness. Maybe something will change soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

My point is that I have more than enough game rules and options already to run through a series of campaigns without getting bored, and I’m seeing very little now to keep me interested in investing more than what I need in the products being released.

Quality has been increasingly sacrificed for more quantity. The articles being written in the magazines, for example, have gotten smaller and less interesting in order to accommodate more new material being released every business day. I actually liked it better when the articles were meatier and more meaningful even if I had to skip a day to wait for them. I used to wait a whole month to get a full issue worth of the good stuff, but it was worth having it in my hands to browse away from my computer screen. Enough said about that.

I’m still a fan of the system, though, and I’ll still be playing it for some time to come. However, as the company continues to roll out new materials and expansions for the game, I’ll begin to feel the pressure when I decide that my plate is full and try to savor the bits and pieces I already have. It won’t be long before I allow myself to become obsolete because I no longer feel the need to keep up with the trends and the new hotness of every month. But the majority of folks out there in the gaming community will continue to feed this insatiable need for new options, new expansions, and new short-attention span scenarios without every really indulging in the game. I suppose I should stop pointing my finger at the company now and point it at these attention-deficit gamers now, right?

Oh, and I don’t plan to be around for a 5th edition next time unless something remarkable happens (remarkable in my opinion, at least). Instead, I may be looking at the new edition of Legend of the Five Rings when it’s released. I wonder if they’ll have a cool character builder program, too?

Each year, they push out a new setting with 2-3 products and then drop any further support for them completely as they focus on the next year’s new hotness. Maybe something will change soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

It strikes me that this is exactly their plan for a sustainable product line.

As for the “average player,” you are assuming that everyone currently playing has been playing since launch, and that there are no new players coming into the game every day, or that people who are currently DMs aren’t becoming players in other games, etc.  I know a few people who play in 3 games a week.  If the average story arc is 3-6 months, that’s a lot of new characters in a year.  I’m basing this off of my previous gaming groups, in that we didn’t explore 1-20 (at the time I was playing)with every character. Each character we made did roughly 5 levels before we moved into a new campaign/story.

One of my players enjoys spending his downtime during a game looking over the PH2 (and will doubtless do the same for PH3). Last week he ask if the roleplaying encounter he was in could be used as an opportunity to change his class. I told him yes but in the end he opted to keep his current class since it made more sense in a rp way.
Players like variety. Once a player gets the handle on the class they are playing (the synergies, combinations, etc) they often look for something new to explore. My plan is to throw a Siege Perilous (a purifying of spirit wherein they can freely change their class-as per the X-Men comic book) once they hit lvl 16. I think it will be fun and shake things up.

And I agree with Cameron. I have absolutely no problem with new classes. All they add is variety. Its the power creep I have a real problem with and thus far pwoer creep in 4E has been low to none.

While it’s true that even within the PHB there were more class/race combinations (64) than you could reasonably explore in anything less than several years, many players don’t set out to explore the whole space of class/race combinations.  Indeed, many players never play certain races, roles, classes, or combinations because they simply don’t interest them.  As a result, the number of class/race cominations that exist in the game is deceptive when it comes to the variety of characters a single player could play.

Also, new races and classes have the potential to attract players to the game who weren’t interested by the previous released classes and races.

The campaign lines are a better example for this. Each year, they push out a new setting with 2-3 products and then drop any further support for them completely as they focus on the next year’s new hotness. Maybe something will change soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

As Cameron said, that’s exactly WotC’s plan and it’s something they’ve learned from history.  TSR attempted to cover a wide variety of campaign settings with in-depth and elaborate supplements.  They wanted to give everything to everyone.  The problem was that since each CS appealed to only a small segment of the RPG market (an already small market), none of the CS’s were capable of selling enough copies to truly be profitable.  In 3.X, WotC learned from this and culled the number of settings down dramatically, hoping that by pushing just a few settings, they’d save enough on the resources assigned to CS development to make them profitable.  The problem of each CS only appealing to a small segment of the RPG market remained, however, and while the 3.X era CSs were more profitable than TSR era CSs, there was a huge portion of the market that simply never bought a CS.  In the 4e era, WotC is striking a compromise.  In the hopes of selling a CS to as much of the RPG market as possible, they’re producing a large variety of CSs.  However, because they know they can’t dedicate a huge amount of resources to all those CSs and remain profitable, they are limiting their dedicated resources to just three books for each setting.  Beyond that, they’re relying on the freelance work that comes in for Dungeon and Dragon to provide any ongoing support for the CSs with the idea being that the more such material is submitted, the more interest there is in the CS (and thus the more market there is for it).

Thanks for providing the additional perspectives, gentlemen. Before I continue, let me just state for the record that I am not trying convince anyone that the game is failing or that everyone else should take heart with my own personal opinions. Obviously, everyone’s styles and approach to the game are vastly different, and if the majority find the current trends of the business model appealing then it will continue successfully despite whether I, the lone minority, choose to support it or not.

I suppose I find it a little unusual that they are still pushing to attract new players to the game. I mean, if people weren’t interested by now, what exactly are they going to offer that’s suddenly going to gain their interest and win their loyalty? (Rhetorical question since we’ve already seen the previews for the new Essential lines and the weekly-sponsored scenario program, but I’m not convinced that these are going to draw in the huge numbers from the untapped market that they are presumably hoping for.)

As far as having more class or race options for players, my point has been: Does everyone get tired or bored so quickly with the huge number of options already out there? Have players really explored every avenue, or at least sampled half of the flavors and builds currently out there that they must hunger for more and different all the time? I realize I’m about to put myself even further outside the conventional gaming circles when I say this, but what ever happened to good old, plot-driven and story-line characters in a campaign? Or does everyone still think of “RP” as the politically correct excuse for saying “Give me what I want”?

Seriously, though,… the “Battlemind”? Battlemind = “guy who battles with his mind”. Well what psionic character in the game isn’t doing that? Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get my head around a concept with a such a terribly generic name like that.

I think there’s a huge gap between the vast number of focused setting products produced during the 2nd Edition era and the “print and forget it” model going on today. There’s plenty of fluff material that can be utilized and converted from past editions to support these revitalized campaign settings coming out, but that’s still work that they’re leaving everyone to do on their own. We may not need twelve products a year to support a fractured or niche market, but it would be nice to see at least one or two things to continue supporting them for at least another year or so. As far as I can tell, they’ve had no problem selling us on the idea that every product is core-compatible and non-campaign specific, including the campaign-specific materials that they put out. So anything with a strong inclination towards one setting over another wouldn’t necessarily exclude anyone in the market, especially if it were aimed towards a popular and profitable setting. Of course, they no longer know which settings are doing well for them since their profit margins extend no further than 3-4 products.

I’ve already mentioned the deteriorating quality and length of articles in both online magazines, so you can probably guess that my reliance for more setting-support material from these sources is not very high. In particular, Dungeon magazine seems incapable of providing anything more than a loose collection of delve-style adventures as of late, but I suspect that much of that is due to the ridiculously huge write-ups for each new installment of the Scales of War campaign. Perhaps when that adventure path is finished we might see more offerings somewhere in the land of “happy medium” again.

Jacob, I have no beef with your opinion on the deteriorating quality.  I still haven’t subscribed because I’m still pissed about Character Visualizer and Game Table, so when talking about being in a minority position RE: 4th Edition, I’m there.  I also think “Battlemind” is like they’re not even trying.

As for the campaign settings, I’d love more info on some (Eberron, possibly Dark Sun after I get a look at it) and couldn’t care less about others (Forgotten Realms for sure).  As for whether it will draw more people in or not, I think the release of Dark Sun and all the talk about that just points at the possible numbers of new 4E customers.  Resurrecting popular old settings and doing a decent job of both keeping them the same and updating them sounds to me like a sure-fire way to bring in those gamers who were left out in the cold.  I haven’t bought anything for 4E other than the core books.  I got the Eberron books as gifts, and was deadset against giving WotC any more of my money.  My tastes for gaming in general are trending toward the “Rules-Lite” kind of systems (Wushu, Slasher Flick, Risus, etc), and between my distaste for the way 4E was hyped and rolled out and that shifting taste, I felt comfortable not giving Wizards more money.  But damned if the info coming out about Dark Sun doesn’t just make me salivate.

As for the builds and the samples, I’m far more of the opinion that classes as a “thing” hamper what I want to do more than facilitate my desires.  When a new class comes out that I think better suits my initial goal with my character or awakens a new train of thought for another character, I’m far more likely to try that than a different version of the ranger.  Plus, I just don’t like playing certain character types (healers and meat-shields) which effectively erases half of the builds in the core books.  So while I haven’t exhausted every option, I have certainly moved into a place where none of the remaining options hold any appeal.

I’m not entirely convinced that the quality of any single mechanical element has been going down as a result of the shift in publication style.  I think the reduced quantity of mechanical elements which support any particular concept leads to far less ability to really play with the concept, and so the concept may seem to be of lower quality even though each piece of it is just as balanced as before.  Likewise, I think the smaller articles mean that the fluff content of the articles have been reduced significantly and in the case of fluff, a reduction in quantity is also a reduction in quality.  In fact, I’ve complained about the lack of fluff in several of my article reviews.

Does everyone get tired or bored so quickly with the huge number of options already out there? Have players really explored every avenue, or at least sampled half of the flavors and builds currently out there that they must hunger for more and different all the time?

As I said before, I don’t think they have, nor do I think they ever will.  As Cam pointed out, he doesn’t like to play healers or meat-shields.  As a result, he’s unlikely to ever play a defender or leader.  This eliminates 4 of the 8 classes in the PHB from his play space.  Add to that the fact that some warlock builds lean towards defender, and his play space is further reduced.  Some players are even more particular than Cam.  You have to remember that just because a combination is possible, doesn’t mean that every player will want to play it.  As a result, some players may have already reached the limit of what the PHB can offer them.  Adding more options is WotC’s attempt to keep those players in the game.