Being a full-time DM, I’ve been very curious what changes the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons brought to the proverbial role-playing table. Well, I finally got my hands on a copy of the rulebooks last night, and so far, my biggest impression of the new edition is that it feels like an MMO.
Now, I’m not an avid MMO player – I’ve only played one, and only semi-frequently. I also haven’t read the PHB word for word yet, but I feel like there’s a connection between the two.
One change I would attribute to my MMO-impression is the new setting that the PHB assumes. When I first heard that fourth edition would set towns like “points of light in the darkness,” I didn’t quite grasp the concept in its entirety. Specifically, the new rules assume a setting that is between the fall of one great era/civilization and the rise of the next. To me, that sounds like a video game: towns are isolated hubs of interaction and resting – if you want to get to the next one, you have to travel through the wilderness and its dangers to get there. Quite reminiscent of an MMO (admittedly, I also thought of Dragon Warrior).
This PHB also offers a smaller variety of choices, but more freedom to choose, if that makes any sense. For example, it seems that prestige classes have kicked the bucket; instead, players multi-class or choose from different abilities to customize their characters. Now, that sounds a lot like a video game to me. Specifically, I would name Diablo II, WoW, and just about every other MMO out there. Maybe it’s just me.
Probably the final change that made me think of a video game was the way abilities work now. By breaking down abilities into attack and utility powers, and further into at-will, encounter, and daily usage categories, characters will probably be able to go longer without resting than they were able to in 3rd edition. Kind of like characters can do in an MMO.
If the designers did make 4th edition more like an MMO, it would make sense to me. One of the biggest sellers in the geek industry is WoW and other MMOs, meaning that if people start saying “Hey, this new edition of D&D is like an MMO”…you get the picture.
So what about the people who don’t like/play MMO’s?
You’re an idiot. Nothing has changed between 4th and 3.5 except that everything is much more streamlined. I don’t have to waste an hour between levels trying to figure out all the things I have to take to make sure my Archer can keep up with the Wizards. The power system has ALWAYS been there. However, in 3.5, they were called feats or were specific things that you needed to multiclass into 3 prestige stages to get.
And your town idea is ridiculous. That’s what towns have always been in my campaigns. They were safety points most of the time when I didn’t infest them with zombies or an evil dictator. My friend used them mostly as pit stops and staging grounds for story in his campaigns… until the Lich King burned down the city.
Prestige Classes aren’t so much gone as they’ve just been built in. Now I don’t need to be a Barbarian/Ranger/Fighter/OotB/Scout/…. in order to just have an Archer that does what I want. I pick the abilities I want every few levels and then I pick a paragon path that has more abilities that I want. How is that anything more than a simpler way to how it used to be?
To say that WotC missed how well video game rpgs work would be stupid. WotC saw a system that works and is balanced, non-hectic, and easy as hell to build and thought “Why can’t we make D&D more streamlined, easy, and fun and less bogged down by idiotic unnecessary rules?”, and they did. But to say that D&D is now like an MMO is ridiculous considering that there isn’t a single RPG out there that didn’t steal from D&D in the first place.
If your 4th ed game feels like an MMORPG, then you have one horrible horrible DM and need to find a new one.
I can’t say as I can really have a valid opinion on the changes between one edition and the next having never played D&D myself. The only Tabletop I’ve ever dabbled in was Legendary Adventures over an internet chat site. I definitely enjoyed the experience though, when we could get together our group to play. It was a very refreshing break from the more restricted world of WoW. However having said that I’m still an avid (addicted) MMO player and probably will be for a very long time. There’s something nice about not having to think about sometimes, especially after a long day in class when all I want to do is kill something…