Well, I have been selling, and Playing 4th ed for almost a year now, and one of the big arguments / complaints I hear a lot of is, its just like an MMO.   Now i play World of Warcraft, and have dabbled in a lot of other MMOs over the years, and as far as I can tell, that assertion does not really make sense.   I have combat powers in both games, but they usage mechanic is real time vs. turn based, I am balancing a magic point system, and the powers come back in seconds rather then fights.   Honestly, they don’t feel the same, and I never get the same character interaction out of an MMO that I get riffing with my friends on a Saturday night.    Recently however, I was chatting with a customer and they made a point I had to think about.   They pointed out it does play a whole lot like a Turn Based Tactical RPG like final fantasy tactics or Disgia.  You have a set amount of movement a turn, and then the ability, generally to drop one power on an enemy or group of enemies, and then you hop back in the Initiative queue till next turn.Obviously the parallels are never perfect, but I am inclined to think that D&D 4 does play a lot closer to that type of game then it has in previous editions.  The power system feels pretty similar and the grid plane just reinforces that feeling.   Now personally, I love those kinds of games, so if anything it just gives D&D another spin I enjoy, but I can see why some people might find the new combat system a bit more restrictive then the older editions.   The powers system in D&D 4 as written is not helping with this much.  For space and simplicity, the powers are almost all written as damage to enemy, plus effect, and then we move on.  Now when you start to actually play the game, they blossom with cool effects, and neat combos that build based on your creativity and that of your other party members.  Unfortunately, they only work in combat and generally still only hurt / move enemies.

In the interest in exploring if D&D 4 can be all the game I want it to be, I have started looking into other uses for combat powers.   I am playing a warlock, so my focus has been on their powers, and I am not having as much luck as I would like.  Up through 6th level, the best power I have found for creative uses is Diabolic Grasp.  A big demonic fist grabs your foe, sneezes them like a grape, and then yanks them to a position more to your liking.  Awesome, but it is still just a combat power.  However, when we look at the description, it is a big hand, so why can’t I use it for other things, like pulling the locking bar off a gate, or pulling a barrel or something over on an enemy.  I am inclined to think a lot of powers can be used more creatively, but this is not really discussed in the books, as yet, so it is going to be pretty much up to individual players and DMs to find the creative uses for these powers.   If Wizards ever finds a way to open up the power system to more creative usage, I think it would go a long way to putting to rest the “it’s like an MMO / Video game” argument.  I just wonder if they can do it and still keep the fun fastplay feel of the new system at the same time.

-OuterDork, Dorking out

Hello All,Here is my first stab at a real actual OuterDork Post.   Blogger extraordinaire I am not, so bear with me.

Time to blow the dusk off this blog, and I figure D&D 4th ed is a fine topic to kick things off with.   I have been a proponent of the revision since it was first announced, and I was devouring all the preview information I could get.   I love the rebalance of power between magic users and non mage users, and the simplification of everything that got between me and my dungeon crawling.   As time has moved on, I have gotten to dig into the game more, and actually play in an ongoing campaign, and I continue to be impressed.   I chat with customers every day, and Have found it interesting to see how some of the things I love best about the new game seem to be the same things others don’t like.

The most recent discussion I had was about the loss of the profession and Craft skills.    I have not really noticed they were missing until it was mentioned, and that got me thinking.   I used to take Craft with most of my fighter characters, with grand plans to build my own custom armor some day.  Sadly, in the scope of all the campaigns i ever played in, I almost never managed to MAKE anything.  The checks were too high, and it took to long to actually get anything constructed.   It turned out my hero’s rarely had the months and months it took laboring over a forge to actually make a suite of full plate.  usually they were too busy being…well.. heroes.   It was even harder if you wanted to make a magic item, which took as much time and as many checks, plus rare ingredients and a lot of your hard earned experience.

In 4th edition, they got rid of almost all of that.   Gone are the craft skills, No longer can your hero hope to take time off to be an armeror, or a Jewelry maker.   I can see why this would bother some people, but as I look at it… why did we need rules and skills for that?  D&D is now more then ever about being a hero, and fighting the good fight.  In fantasy rarely does the hero labor over a forge to create his own armor and weapons.  He either finds it, or is gifted it.   If you want your character to have a hobby… take one, the world of role-playing is open to you, but now you don’t have to put points into it, to prove you can do it.   Leave the forge to the blacksmith… your character is a HERO!

As for magic items, the rules have been made as simple as possible.   Learn a ritual, grab a mundane item, and spend gold = to the item you want.  Its capped at your level to hold down power creep, takes almost no time, and anyone who can learn rituals can technically do it.   As far as game rules go, tt seems to me that is all you need.  Sure the epic quest for reagents is no longer laid out in detail… but that is what the DM is for.  Say your wizard wants to make a rare magic wand.   Sure all the rules say is you need cash and a mundane item, but there is nothing to stop a good DM from requiring you to hunt down rare materials, in lieu of just paying the gold cost.   The rules are there, but they are simple, so they don’t distract from getting back into the fray against the forces of evil.  The way I see it, the simplicity makes it much easier to set up awesome role playing quests to build magic times, with just a little imagination, then you were ever able to do with the old clunky experience draining system.

I view professions much the same way.  In my games, rarely, if ever, did the profession skills actually come up.   When I was playing or running D&D we were off fighting, so my former skills as a professional whosiwhatsis never came up.   Professions made for cool role-playing backgrounds, but were rarely worth the skill points you pumped into them.   In 4th ed, its all background.  The few professional type skills, the knowledges, all have a good place, its clearly labeled what you can learn, and how to use the skills.   If you want your character to be a former legal aide, cool, write up a nice back-story.. but don’t worry about the “proof” because its not going to come up the next time your fighting an enraged red dragon.

This post touches on a theme I will likely hit on again, which is that 4th ED D&D is all about the hack and slash, heroic, dungeon crawling loot gathering dragon slaying fun that was always at the core of D&D.  I will agree wholeheartedly that tools for building your characters personality and background are missing from the rules… but I think this is both intentional, and a good thing.   Trying to cram everything into one game rarely works and I think 3 and 3.5 suffered from trying to provide a bit too much, leaving everyone with less.  If you want to run a heavily character driven, no combat style fantasy adventure game, there are better systems out there, like earth dawn, or exalted etc.   By stripping some of that out of D&D, they have created a lean, mean dungeon crawling machine, and I am loving every moment of it.   I’ll touch more on this later, and I would love to hear your comments, but I am late for my game, and I am eager to get back into my warlocks skin, and start burning the flesh from the bones of my enemies.

This is the Outer Dork, Dorking out.

All you have to do is click though the door, and you can enter into a world of dorkery the likes of which have never been SEEN!

Well, ok, they may have been seen, but never duplicated.

Ok, so they have been duplicated, but not by as much as this.

I need to leave the computer now.

-OuterDOrk

Welcome to The Outer Dork!   This came to me one evening while i was staring out into the interspaces, playing with domain names.   Every so often I get the idea for a domain name and go check to see if its been registered.  Usually it has, but that evening, i punched in The Outer Dork… and here we are.  This small addition to the blog-oh sphere is dedicated to dorkly pursuits of all kinds.   I personally consider myself something of a renaissance Dork.  I work tech support, I own a comics and games store, and I play far to many war games for my wallets own good.   I make no promises to be a decent writer, because, well.. I’m not a good writer.  I’m just a dork, expressing my dorklythoughts.  We threw together a forum, I’ll have that running in a day or two in the hopes that you are all better writers then I am, and will be willing the share thoughts, ideas, and dorkly madnesses with each other.

Note this is probably a place holder I’ll replace with something more polished at a later date… so save this now, because its a collectors post.

Yours Dorkly

-The Outer Dork