On Wednesday, the 22nd of August, I had the chance to be present for one of the first public unveilings of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Myself and a group of journalists (mostly from tabletop trade publications, but a few websites as well) sat for a presentation on the newest thing from Wizards of the Coast. We didn’t know for certain that we were about to see the new edition of D&D, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the room was thinking along the same lines. Again, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll point out that this presentation was done at a fairly nice steak restaurant. We were fed right after the presentation was done.

My initial reaction was the same muted anger I think a lot of people felt when they first heard the news. Over the course of just the presentation, though, I found myself swayed. I was easily swayed for a couple of reasons:

1. I am not that big a fan of the 3.5 rules. Almost every argument I’ve ever had with a player has been over a rules dispute, and any effort to clarify edge cases and make flow work better is a win for me.
2. On the flip side of that, I have a lot of respect for the D&D R&D team. Chris Perkins, James Wyatt, and Bill Slavicsek are righteously smart people, and it’s been an interesting disconnect to be frustrated by the D&D game rules, but agree so heartily with the Design and Development column on the Wizards website.
3. Likewise, the changes to the D&D mechanics they’ve introduced in more recent books have all been stuff I’ve really enjoyed. Players Handbook II is a gold mine; I’m about to start playing in a campaign, and three of the four characters are using classes out of that book because they’re so well done.

So even just after the presentation was done, I was hopeful, and I’ve grown even more hopeful in the last two weeks. Why is that? Well, let me walk you through the presentation I was given. I’ll try to lay out their play just the way they did. Then I’ll lay out what they’ve released about the setting since then, primarily in the form of the Design and Development articles, and the Playtest Notes pieces. They’ve actually already given us lots of hints about what the new game will be like, and the differences are quite stunning. I’ll also offer up a few opinions of my own, suspicions I have about what things are going to be like. Hopes, as it were.

I’m doing this as much for me as for you, but I hope that you find this amalgamation of information to be helpful. This is what D&D 4th Edition is going to look like. I hope.

You’re At A Tavern

So, to set the stage: It’s a quite, dimly lit meeting room off of the main dining room of a big-name steak house. There are three tables in the room, each surrounded by chairs and filled by folks from the Wizards of the Coast staff and media. Besides Bill Slavicsek (who did the primary presentation), Chris Perkins was also in the room and offered up additional commentary throughout the evening. There were several PR folks (of course), and the gent who is in charge of Wizards’ online presence (Gleemax, et al).

The message of the evening was that fourth edition is intended to be an ‘evolution of game design, not revolution of game design’. They’ve taken the last eight years of feedback into account when making the game, and they have no interest in creating something for the sake of ‘art’. They have taken a look at what works and what doesn’t in 3.5. They’re leaving the stuff that works more or less alone, and iterating heavily on the stuff that doesn’t. IE: the core mechanic is a d20 roll, but monsters, CR, and building encounters are probably going to be quite different than they were in 3.5.

The game is going to be more expansive. Just on the front of the PHB, there ’s a new character race. The core books also go up to level 30 instead of 20, incorporating epic level play into the basic game. These levels are quantified as Heroic (1-10), Paragon (11-20), and Epic (21-30). Heroic is intended to mean just that. “We want first level to be more than ‘run away, it’s a kobold.’ Gone are the days of the four hit point Wizard.”

They also recognize that people really like knowing where things come from, ‘behind the scenes’ information, and that’s going to have a place in the PHB. This ‘expanded content’ will be on a bonus disc at the back of the book, just like with a good DVD set. It’s going to feature designer content, behind the scenes movies, expanded rules options, and simple online tools. They may just want to include this to help justify the $29.99 pricetag, but I’m already looking forward to this content.

Easier All Around

Even with Epic play, one of the primary goals of the project is to making things easier on the Dungeon Master. They want to take some of the more onerous elements off the plate of the DM, as everyone has less time than they’d like nowadays. As I mentioned above, they specifically pointed out encounters as something that needs fixing. They’re apparently completely redoing the way encounters are formatted, as well as re-examining their basic ‘logic’. The new goal is to have more monsters in every fight, as well as more movement. They want to encourage strategy, not just ‘four guys hacking at the big baddie.’ They’re also going to more fully defining monster roles; allowing the DM to use monsters more effectively, as well as teaming them up in effective ways.

They’re making things easier for the players, by more clearly defining party roles. Everybody should be able to know ‘what they’re doing’ at all times. There won’t just be ‘one way’ anymore, though. Fighters won’t all use Greatswords. Within each role, there are suites of powers that allow players to be effective in different ways. The defined this as ‘new power sources’, something that’s already been touched on in online content since Gen Con. They’re adding functionality so that every class has something cool to do all the time, at every level. They’re also taking another stab at resource management. Chris pipes up to note that in 3.5, at low levels, everybody goes home after the first fight. The clerics and wizards have already done their thing, and it’s time for some tea.

Bill points to the Book of Nine Swords as a place where they’ve let some of their resource ideas leak out. They also ‘test flew’ many of their new game concepts in Players Handbook II and the Saga Edition of Star Wars (just recently released, and reviewed by me at Slashdot). To that end you can expect to see faster play around the table, a lessened need to look up rules. They know it will happen, but they want to avoid things that will bring the game grinding to a halt. “Grapple, we’re looking at you”, quipped Slavicsek.

The Other Shoe

This is all making a lot of sense, and up until this point the room is fairly quiet; but then comes the slide that starts the shifting and whispering throughout the room. While ‘evolution’ is the watchword for the rules, ‘revolution’ is the goal for product delivery and player interaction. To start with, physical products will be combined with a digital version of same. This is an unlockable version of the book you just bought, on the D&D Insider website. There will be a nominal fee for this unlock, “probably about a buck.” Their ultimate goal with their online presence is a 24/7 play experience: the ability to get into a game or get a group together any day at any time. They’ll be fascilitating this with digital tools and applications and ‘cool things’ that enhance the tabletop game experience, not replace it. this was a strong point during the whole rest of the presentation. They don’t want to replace your tabletop game.

I’ll say that again: they do not want to replace your tabletop game. The goal here is to provide a service which will allow players who don’t have regular groups, or DMs who don’t have players, or parties that have been split up by distance and time, the opportunity to actually get a game going.

This online portion, and the physical books, are just two legs of their new ‘four legged table’ for D&D. These four parts make up fourth edition, and while Slavicsek said (in as many words) that “we still consider the book the most important part of the game”, they’re going to be putting a lot of effort into these other bits. The four parts of Fourth Edition are: Physical books, Digital Content (D&DInsider), Community (Gleemax), and Organized Play. This last gave me pause, and I was pleased to realize that their intent is to fully integrating the RPGA into the game. Not only will RPGA games be regular sites in games stores and at conventions, their intent is to make it a fundamental part of home gameplay as well.

They touch most briefly on the Gleemax community side of things, a project that I went into some detail on in a writeup from PAX 2007. The goal of Gleemax, in the broadest sense, is to allow players to connect with each other, with DMs, and with the R&D team. Fans who want to will be able to connect with the R&D department in unprecedented ways, and they’re going to be generally far more ‘available’ than they’ve ever been before. Designers will all have blogs, for example, but they imply things like regular chat sessions and lectures from the folks making the game.

Friends, Online, With Dice

Just from the few moments spend discussing D&DInsider, it’s obvious how proud they are of it. It’s going to be an integral part of the D&D experience after Fourth Edition launches, and will be a part of every product between now and the new edition. 3.5 products with the D&Dinsider logo are backwards compatible after the switchover; they’ll have content online that tweaks encounters, rules, etc. to be useful for the future.The site itself will be subscription based. Their term for is that it will be “More than a single magazine, less than an MMO’s monthly fee.” It will also have applications and tools for DMs, character creators, encounter builders, and brand new content three times a week. This last bit is essentially the new Dungeon and Dragon, rolled into one. The 3x a week content will be rolled into a single package at the end of each month, and will be branded with the two well-known logos.

Insider is also the home of the D&D Game Table. That project is essentially various applications for the DM combined into a cohesive product. You’ll be able to set up maps using tilesets, and run a game online with voice support. “It turns the internet into your kitchen table”, Slavicsek says. Vivox is going to provide the voice chat component. The application supports lighting, some simple animations, online miniatures. Beholders can actually float, of course. It also allows them to do monsters they could never do in plastic minis. This is, again, a supplemental part of D&D, and isn’t intended to take the place of your gaming table. It will allow pickup games, and far-flung groups to get together.

The character creator has, of course, a character sheet. You can also make a visualization of the character you want to play. A ‘miniature’ is a 3D image of the character, with armor, skin, weapons, clothing, and poses. The character can go right onto a base, and right onto the game table. “You don’t have to play a mini that’s close to you. You can play your character.”

The release timetable is spread out, so that folks won’t have to drop $90 in one month. We’ll see the Player’s Handbook in May 2008, the Monster Manual in June, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide in August. Wayne Reynolds did the art for all three covers.

Queries, Responses

At that point they opened things up for a short Q&A before dinner arrived. Here were the most important asked and answered questions:

• Backwards Compatability – What will happen to 3.5 material? Products between now and the Fourth Edition launch will be ‘edition-proof’. Most will be mechanics-lite and story-heavy. The Dungeon Survival Guide, Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress, Practical Guide to Monsters, for example. As mentioned previously, products like adventures will be D&DInsider enhanced. When the site goes fully functional, books with that logo will get new stats and encounters online to make the product 4th edition compatible. Most older 3.5 stuff will not be treated in this fashion.
• OGL? – OGL is going to still be around. Third party publishers will be invited in, the SRD will be updated, everything is still going to be available to those who want it.
• Core Campaign Setting – The setting will be neutral. Not even “kinda greyhawk” this time around. The Realms will be the first updated campaign setting, with a new FR mainbook in September. Eberron gets its 4th edition bump in 2009.
• Recruiting Younger Players – They’re going to move the core base first, and then work to bring in younger players to the newer version. Minis are getting a reboot next year too, and they’re very much aimed at younger folks.
• Price Point – They’re sticking with the current prices. Probably $29.99 each for the core books, with page counts roughly the same. The new books will completely redo the internal layout, with an eye towards making information easy to reference. “Less like a textbook” is the phrasing.
• Online Minis - A series of tokens will be available to cover monsters that aren’t in the initial 3D mini release, but the 3D versions will be made available at a regular pace. They dodged the question of online minis costing money.
• The Launch – They’re going to be going big with this. Big retail events, community turnout, ‘midnight madness’ events, making it ‘exciting’. The goal is to bring the current playerbase ‘with them’ into the new edition, as well as to try to get lapsed players back into the game.
• DDO – Not going to affect DDO in the slightest; new rules have nothing to do with the MMOG.

Information Since Gen Con

Since the Con of Cons came to a close, the R&D team has put out seven Design and Development articles, three Playtest Reports articles, and a Podcast about the announcement. Between and inside of these features, we’ve been dancing around the core of the new game, giving us as players a sense of what’s to come. Here is a bullet point representation of information taken from these sources:

• Classes are going to have a lot more internal variation from character to character. Fighters are singled out as the example for this, with ’sword and board’ fighters being substantially different than a flair Fighter or an two-handed axe Fighter.
• These characters’ abilities will stem from the Martial Power Source. Unlike Wizards and Clerics, Fighters draw their strength from endless training and personal resolve. These characters are about ‘mastering their inner potential’ and externalizing it in the form of combat.
• Races will have more efficacious abilities, with some pieces coming into play as your character goes up in level. Again, the intent is to have characters differ from each other even if they’re the same race and class. Racial feats will allow special tricks, tactics. Half-elves will get something called ‘inspiring presence’, which has to suck less than what they’ve got now.
• Monsters are going to have far more in the way of options when it comes to combat, as seen in an article about what it’s like to fight a dragon. New dragon abilities include: AoE attacks based on their energy type, the ability to attack as a free action, and the ability to use a breath weapon in response to an attack.
• Clerics will somehow be able to heal allies while doing damage, as described here: “Calling on the power of her god, she swings her halberd at the dragon—a critical hit! The damage isn’t bad, but even better, the wizard gets a nice surge of healing power.”
• Dungeons will be designed with that earlier stated goal of ‘more monsters, more movement, more tactics’ in mind. Instead of having players go from room to room fighting a couple of enemies at a time, groups of monsters will be interconnected. They’ll come to each other’s aid, and generally make things more messy for the players.
• Character classes now fall into one of four Archetypes: Leaders, Defenders, Strikers, and Controllers. Bards and Clerics are Leaders, and Bards are going to be more specialized than they are in 3.5. Parties that choose to double up on certain Archetypes while leaving others out will face different challenges than a ‘balanced’ group … but should still be able to play.
• Though it’s not entirely clear, one of the Playtest Reports hints that loot will be handled differently for NPC encounters. This would be something I’d greatly appreciate, as I love sending NPCs at my players but hate them walking away with six +1 longswords as a result.
• Tieflings are implied as a core PC race by the PHB cover art, and a Playtest Report implies that Eladrin will be as well.
• Ranged melee attackers are going to be much more effective in this version of the game: “[The player's] second impression [of Fourth Edition combat] came squarely from the three arrows with which Heron skewered the hapless goblin sharpshooter in the loft. That poor goblin fired on Heron, missing but triggering an immediate counterattack from the ranger, who followed up with two more arrows on his turn. The sharpshooter was dead before the third arrow struck home.”
• Rogues will have a group buff ability of some kind, described as ’shouting encouragement’.
• A wizard, hitting a wolf with her staff, not only did damage but ‘moved it away’, implying knockback as a basic combat element. There is also an implication that a long weapon like a staff can hit more than one enemy with a single blow.
• The concept of ‘Second Wind’ is used in a Playtest Report, which is a game mechanic lifted right from Saga Edition Star Wars. From that book: “If you are reduced to one-half your maximum hit points or less, you can catch a second wind as a swift action. The action heals one-quarter of your full hit point total (ruond down) or a number of hit points equal to your Constitution score, whichever is greater. You can catch a second wind only once per day.”
• Rogues can attack such that their opponents are vulnerable to other ally attacks, possibly an Attack of Opportunity.

My Take

Given all of the above, I’m even more excited than I was than when I left the restaurant that Wednesday. Fighters that won’t see the Greatsword as alpha and omega of their class? Rogues with buffs and feints? Wizards that can do knockback? Bards that don’t suck? Sign me up.

Having now played the Saga Edition of Star Wars, I’m comfortable in saying that they definitely know how to make a game move faster. The combat I participated in at Gen Con was lightning fast, facilitated by the one-character-one-attack rule, which I very much hope makes it into D&D. That said, the huge array of combat tactics shown off in the fight with the dragon example text is slightly offputting. As a DM, am I going to be be able to remember all of the dragon’s cool moves? Are the players going to fully understand all of their new options?

Reservations aside, I can’t help but marvel at the ambition of this plan. This really feels like a make-or-break move on WotC’s part: get the gamers interested again and (if we make it easy enough to play) maybe we can finally hit the mainstream. Wizards of the Coast as the tabletop gaming world’s Blizzard is an easy comparison to make, I think.

If it sucks, I’ll heartily dig into my dish of crow and weep with the rest of nerd-dom. Some nine months from the release of the PHB, though, there’s the possibility for so much potential as to be staggering. As much as I’m looking forward to getting the book in my hand and (most importantly) running a game, I’m looking forward to the next nine months too. Getting to learn, along with the rest of the gaming world, more about classes, feats, magic, monsters, xp, encounters. Getting to read articles, listen to podcasts, delight in blog entries. It’s going to be like learning about D&D all over again, it’s going to be like learning to play the game again for the first time.

If there’s nothing a gamer likes more than a new game, I don’t know what it is. The idea of Dungeons and Dragons as a new game, for the first time in almost a decade, is incredibly cheering. Here’s hoping the next nine months prove out the ambition of the Wizards of the Coast, and that the players are the ones ultimately served best by this decision.