NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek In Review: Keeping The Borderlands Alive

Let me say before I continue I'm not arguing that one edition is better than the other. They each have things to recommend them, and I certainly have my preferences, but that's not what this is about. Also, the things I mention of 2nd edition (2E) are largely true of 3rd edition (3E) as well.

4th edition (4E) would not have caused so much a stir if they had made it a whole new game system instead of the next edition, which is honestly what it feels like. I suppose it's a bit stark to me because at about the same time I started running a 4E campaign to see how it played, I joined a 2E, Return to the Tomb of Horrors campaign. In the 2E campaign I'm playing a cleric. This cleric, in addition to having an expansive spell sheet full of spells to detect lies, see through illusions, sanctify ground and purify food, fold space, divine the future, cure diseases and mend wounds spends most of his combat rounds casting spells to protect his allies or leaving his enemies stunned for rounds.

That sort of character doesn't exist in 4E. A cleric has non-combat rituals, sure, but they're separated from the spells, must be found or purchased, and are far sparser and more limited. In combat a cleric has only a few powers to support the party outright. The rest of a cleric's support comes from not doing as much damage as damage as the other party members and causing statuses that last a round or so instead. I should note, not once in the 4E campaign I run have we has to pause to discuss the precise workings of a power. At the same time, though, I could have built a cleric similar to the 4E ones for the trip to The Tomb, I just chose not to. Instead, I build a character whose play style was dropped.

I know a lot of people say the earlier editions were too mathy or complex. If they were, they were hardly impenetrable, and there was depth in that complexity that was lost in the attempt to make it more accessible. The first example people always cite against this is how ridiculously difficult using THACO to calculate hits was, but you know what? Here's how THACO works: Subtract the target's Armor Class (AC) from your THACO. You need to roll that or higher on a D20 to hit. That's not perfect, but it's hardly difficult. It's worst sin was being poorly named. (You. I see you. Yes, you. The one who's about to start complaining about negative AC values. When that happens, you subtract a negative. That's something they taught you how to do in grade school.)

As for it's similarities to WoW, yes, relative to previous editions it is pretty WoW-esque. You'd never mistake the two, but having played both, I can see the similarities that crept in in mechanics and settings both. I'm not much a fan of them. I remember a world and a game system where elementals didn't serve the elemental lords of the elemental chaos; where only a quarter or so of a mage's spells actually did damage; where evil could be lawful and good could be chaotic; where you could be a good climber but only a fair runner, and you could decide just how much better a climber than a runner you were; where you could start at a heroic level with a good set of abilities, significant amount of health, and a reasonable amount of power, or you could start out as a farmer's child picking up a sword for the first time in your life to defend your town against a pack of goblins, any one of whom could kill you as easily as you could kill it, and who survives against all odds, marking the start of your character's heroic legend. I remember this world, and while I won't claim 4E is terrible, when I look at it, there are parts of this world I wish had survived intact.

Gah! A magic user in armor? Next thing you'll be telling me is that clerics can use edged weapons and carry swords along with the wizards...

Alas, it has been many moons since my half-elf ranger-mage saw the light of day. I think I got into Palladium games around the time TMNT was added to their collection (the After the Bomb addition was awesome, imagine Mad-Max with Mutants, Car Wars with Paranoia). It was pretty much the precursor to RIFTS which pretty much dominated the last days of RPGing for me...

1. I am way too poor to buy all new books every several years. 3.5 was prolly the last time. I much preferred the old way, which was assuredly not nearly as profitable. You have one edition and release hundreds of optional support books. 2nd Edition lasted me 12 years. Now wizards of the coast wants me to buy a 3rd version of the game in half that time?

2. I cannot endorse a D&D system that has no bards.

But isn't the magic of DnD that each hit does a minimum of one damage? I remember reading or hearing that a group had a free action pimp slap for 1 damage to keep everyone in line.

More cat funny: I think it was under 3.5 that someone polymorphed into a cat - being denied the racial Jump ability - was too weak to hop onto a table.

I seem to recall at least one occasion where in the event of rolling dice, the DM would suddenly declare the party was randomly ambushed by a ferociously cute and furry beast as the offending die was chased down and swatted by his cat. Funny how the little interruptions in life were manifested into real crises and events in the realm of fantasy...

I can remember killing off a particularly annoying lawful good, dwarf, paladin in our party with my chaotic neutral, half-elf, ranger after he kept misleading the group into folly after ridiculous folly. Though I was the most experienced player among the younger AD&D group, leadership really wasn't my style. I tended to be more democratic, he more demanding and bombastic. In the end though, I guess I preferred to do my own thing and his character's demise left the party leaderless but much happier (especially after I left the spoils to the younger players). Needless to say, and much to my chagrin, my real life association with the other player soured after that game. It was quite the blessing though since he'd been hanging on to me once he knew about game night at the pizza parlor. He just kept showing up like a particularly pestilential and recurrent sore. Kind of funny how one game easily resolved that issue. I do feel a bit sorry for doing it now, but at the time everyone thought it was a wonderful coupe de gras.

Thanks for writing another awesome article. You give us geeks something else to look forward to.

Can't agree more. I read a lot of BS on the internets from neck-beardy types about what a supreme injustice against humanity 4e was going to be. Then I bought it. Now I play it. It is fun AND it managed to get my fellow 20-30somethings back together to play and enjoy ourselves which 3x never did despite owning the books. now if only were were not all so busy!

It is too bad that the financial needs sometimes seem to trump the fun-game needs at wotc but I guess that's the price you pay for being part of a relatively well-off minority.

By the same token, had you run a fighter in 2E, your options would typically boil down to attacking several times. In 4E, the fighter is nearly as option-rich as the spellcasters. Personally, I prefer a system that makes every character type interesting to play, and it looks to me like 4E accomplishes that. 2E certainly doesn't. (3E made some steps in that direction, but I'd still beeline for the casters.)

Also, it sounds like you were playing fairly high level (as I would expect for the Tomb of Horrors). In 2E and 3E, spellcasters' spell options widen and improve dramatically over the course of their career...but at the cost of having little to cast and very few options in the early levels. A 1st level 2E wizard is a pathetic waste of space, capable of one (count 'em, one) spell per day and none of those especially prepossessing, while being fragile as hell and barely any use once that spell is expended. Clerics, being sturdier and capable of fighting effectively in melee, are a bit better off, but still weak on the whole casting thing. Meanwhile, in 4E they start out wielding multiple at will abilities that make them effective in combat throughout, *plus* the encounter and daily abilities. Admittedly, that doesn't expand dramatically over the levels (tending more towards replacing earlier abilities with more powerful later level ones), but I think it goes a long ways toward making low levels fun in a way they have never been for me before.

I do like 4E, but at times it feels a bit too much like an MMO. The Power system is something that really does that. The speed and ease of play is quite astounding though. I have to give them credit on this one, they really did take the game back to basics and return it to a fun game that anyone can learn to play. Great article Wil.

First of all Evermancise , if I was in the area I'd look you up , cause I'd love to be in a 2E campaign right now . I think I've figured out the problem I have with 4E . The fact that it's so different from earlier editions ( yeah , I know , he's griping about the killing of sacred cows ) makes me ill . If I wanted to play a game that had a ton of options for any class , I'd play GURPS or one of it's ilk . If I'm playing something called D&D , then I expect certain things . Just like if I'm playing checkers , I don't expect to be able to move pieces like a chess piece .
If I could divorce myself form the name , I probably could enjoy the game . But the fact that they changed core races for no good reason , knocked some out just to replace them with things I have no interest in playing ( & again , yeah I know they'll be in later books . way to make me spend money I shouldn't have to spend ) , changed classes in a bid for balance that just makes everyone boringly alike ( IMO ) , and last but not least canceled the magazines while at it ... needless to say , I don't see myself playing anytime soon .

I never meant to imply 4E didn't do anything good. Instead I meant to point out what, in my opinion, it lacks. In 2E there was a seldom referenced clarification that explains a good deal of this in my mind. You may or may not remember, if you were playing as a mage, you weren't considered a mage in-game until 9th level. Until then, you were a mage-in-training. The same held true with the other classes. Most games I played in 2E or 3E weren't meant to go from first level to twentieth. Because of that, the DM decided what sort of campaign he wanted to run at the beginning and told the players to create characters of a level that would fit. Half of the campaigns I played in did not start at first level. In 4e, in addition to everything else they did (good or bad), it seems they decided to start advancement off at that level where you're already well-trained in your class and have all the abilities that go with such experience. Also, in any campaign I've ever played, if you went straight for the mage, the front line would flatten you.

I'm not trying to 4E bash. I'm running a 4E campaign right now, and while everyone is having a good deal of fun, there are things about the edition that still bother me. Again, though, we're still having fun. All the same, I have no plans to run another 4E campaign in the future.

I am having the time of my life playing 4th Edition! I was glad for the improvement.

You don't have to go straight for the mage. All you need to do is breathe lightly on a pre-3rd edition mage with a bad HP roll and they'll drop dead on the spot. Doesn't take much more to do 'em in even at the maximum HP value for first level.

And while mages may have technically been an apprentice of some kind still at first level, that doesn't make them effective or interesting to play, nor does it make them any less useless compared to the melee classes, particularly fighters, in the early levels.

Those campaigns didn't start at first level for a damn good reason.

There are other systems but D&D!!!

I have looked into 4th edition. Not 4 me.

It's nice that they evened the power level among the different classes but it's bad, they did it by making everthing work the same. There are many minor points like the "saving throw = 50% chance".

They finally killed the skill system completely. Probably the logic was: "D&D 3.5 was more successful then games with a better skill system, so 4.0 should have an even worse skill system".

But the one thing that makes me finally say: "No, I won't play this," is that it's incompatible with my prefered gaming style (and luckily that of my group, too):
We sit around, with table or on couch, our character sheets in front and have a story and regularly the DM demands some checks and ultimately, there will also be a little fighting (or a little more fighting if we were bad at plan A).
Fighting - that is a 5 second scretch showing the battlefield and where everybody is, and then the actions are like:
Fighter: Can I move and attack? DM: It's a bit to far but you can charge.
Rogue: I want to move into flanking position. DM: Okay, but you need to spend both moves to avoid his reach, or take an AoO or show me a tumbe 20 check....

You could play D&D3.5 like that. But 4.0 no longer. Lots of powers only have additional effects like pushing and shifting yourself and others around 1 or two squares. Fine differences in areas of effect of spells are suppost to make a diffrence. Those is part of the power balance but it only works with miniatures - like if you are playing chess multiplayer.

It might be a good tabletop game. You might even call it Tabletop RPG. But I like Pen and Paper RPG and Wizards does not see me as their target group anymore.

I've only played 4th ed a few times but so far I really enjoy it. There seems to be a lot more flexibility with character creation and more opportunity to make even a low level character seem unique.

I've been playing it every other weekend for about a year now. It's tabletop WoW.

Some people may like that, but it's not what I want in a pen and paper RPG.

I've got the main Pathfinder book now, and despite a few reservations about some of their changes, I'm soooo looking forward to switching.