It's funny, isn't it, how our feelings about things we love can cloud our perceptions of the world. There's nothing particularly negative about this article, and yet several people have jumped down Archon's throat, comparing it to Fox News, of all things. First of all, this makes no attempt to be news-- it is an interview and an opinion piece, and a very interesting one at that. Why should Archon attempt to be "unbiased" about something he feels very strongly about?That would be deceitful. At the same time, he is rather more thoughtful and balanced in his approach than any of those who are attacking him.
My own relationship with D&D has been a tricky one. There has always been something about the concept of it that has filled me with wonder. I love games of all types, and in some ways D&D is the archetypal game. I started playing it back in the 2nd Edition days, and since then I have also bought 3rd and 4th editions (I skipped 3.5). Each time, I have read the books closely, I have been excited by the changes the designers have made, the attempts they've made to resolve the issues of the previous edition. I put hours and hours of work into designing a setting, a story and NPCs. I get my friends together, build some characters and start a game.
And it collapses after three sessions.
The third collapse, after an attempt at 4th edition, has led me to reflect on the game as a whole. And I think this is the problem: although conceptually exciting, the D&D rules have never been able to fulfil their promise, because they only try to "fix" what has come before, instead of trying to play to the strengths of a role-playing game.
Second Ed suffered from a lot of rules that were ludicrously inconsistent, so in 3rd Ed, they tried to standardise all the rules. When I saw what they'd done, as a game designer I approved. But what happened was that in removing the inconsistencies, they basically only revealed the weaknesses of the core rules. The complexities of the arcana of 2nd edition were in fact part of the fun of playing the game. It felt good to have an understanding of something so complex, as though we ourselves (the players, the DM) were wizards.
So the problem revealed in 3rd edition was this: D&D combat isn't a whole lot of fun. Fighters get to roll the same d20 every round, and hack a little bit more off their enemy, as though they were carving a marble statue. There's nothing dynamic or interesting about hit points!
Which brings us to 4th edition. As far as I can tell, this was the designers' logic: 1) Combat is a very important aspect of D&D, perhaps the most important; 2) Combat is boring a lot of the time; 3) Computer games do some interesting things that could make combat more fun.
Their solution, then, was to give every class more things to do in combat, and by making the game more reliant on miniatures and tactics. The problem was that in doing so, they moved further away from what makes role-playing games fun-- imagination.
Some of this has already been covered by the Dissociated Mechanics article linked in the post, but I want to make a couple of points about what I've realised about my own responses:
1) Computer games do combat much better than tabletop games, because the computer handles all the technical bits.
2) Role-playing games do story and character and imagination and social interaction much better than computer games.
3) The thing that I want from D&D is not streamlined rules or balance, nor is it combat that feels like carving a piece of stone. Instead, I want something that stimulates imagination. I want less rules and more freedom to do things that are exciting.
And yes, I realise that there are other RPGs out there that do these things better (but for better or worse) has always been THE role-playing game, and I believe that it should be leading the way. So when (god forbid) it comes time for 5th edition to be designed, I hope the developers head this advice:
Play to the strengths of role-playing games. Make the CONCEPT of D&D sacred, not the rules. Throw out levels and hit points -- they belong to WoW now. Stimulate out imaginations. Think big.
The End
(I'd just like to thank Chrome for saving this entire post from my accidental browser-close towards the end. I didn't know it did that. Chrome is awesome.)
