…and struck like a rattlesnake
The Mother’s Day breakfast with my mom and Grace went very well indeed. We ate a ton of food, talked about everything from dogs to taxes to beer to relatives and generally had a good time. Once we got home, Grace puttered around the house and I worked most of the afternoon out in the garden.
In the inevitable “other news”, I’ve been reading bits and pieces about the upcoming 4th edition of D&D. While I am not anywhere near the target audience for this game (I’m over 50, I like rules light/setting heavy games, I thought D&D 3rd Edition was a clusterfuck), I can’t help feeling that, if what I’ve read is really how the game is targeted, Hasbro/WOTC is screwing the D&D pooch. It would seem that the target audience is divided between MMORPG players and the more hardcore type of tabletop gamer. Why would an MMORPG player want the hassle of finding a group to play a tabletop RPG? If I could get my gaming buddies together online to play, oh, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I’m afraid my tabletop RPGing would fade away. People play WoW and other online games for several reasons, and some of those reasons are ease of entry, ease of play and ease of finding other players. And let us not forget instant gratification. In all of these areas, tabletop RPGs are way behind MMORPGs.
Targeting the hardcore D&D gamer is a guaranteed sale, but if you do it at the expense of newer players, I think you are making a mistake. I cannot count the number of new players I’ve seen who went into “deer in the headlights” mode when they were confronted with less than accessible rules (and less than accessible settings, in some cases). 4E does not really seem to be addressing this, altho there is supposed to be some sort of introductory version coming out next fall.
Now, it’s possible that what I’ve been seeing (with the exception of sneak peeks of the actual game) is all so much horseshit being spouted by frothing at the mouth gamers, but I’m betting it’s not. Still, we only have a short time until the game comes out and then we can all see what is up.
And now, I’m outta here.
The Dociverse Blog 
If anything, 4th Edition rules feel more accessible than previous editions, in part because of the MMORPG direction. There are few “If you’ve got this sort of character in this sort of situation then this wacky other stuff happens,” certainly compared to 2nd Edition (which is what I remember best). It feels like it’s the most efficient system for wandering around and killing monsters that D&D has had yet.
I’m sure old D&D fans will have plenty to complain about, but old D&D fans usually seem to have something to complain about. Folks that liked arcane exceptions to the rules and complicated spell interactions (I admit they’re fun) can still use all their old books. Others (including newbies) will have a system with fairly straightforward character bits like “Of your set of options, you chose X. That lets you make attack Y with damage Z once per encounter.” It’s not the coolest RPG system I’ve ever seen, but it feels like it’s a good match for a D&D sort of game. If anything, they’re appealing to new folks at the (possible) expense of hardcore folks.