Take On DnD 4th Edition
July 29th, 2008 | by Sqotty |If you are wondering what a look at the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons and politics have in common, then sit tight and we’ll get to it.
I’ve been playing DandD for way too many years. I still have every DandD book I have ever purchased, starting with the original 3-book boxed set and the several supplements that followed it in the ’70s. When I relocated to Minnesota in 2001, I was delighted to fall in with a group of gamers about my age and have been playing in a campaign using DandD 3.0 with some house rules and a few imports from 3.5, ever since.
Fortunately, one of the members of the group picked up the 4th edition that was recently released. His take; it was designed to appeal to the video game crowd.
The new 4th edition shows so little resemblance to the game I have played for over 30 (yep, I am dating myself here) years. Over the years I have seen things added and subtracted from the game. Some for better, some for worse. The better would be embraced, and the worse tossed on the ash heap of history, along with communism. Sadly, that is where the new 4th edition belongs in its entirety.
One of the things that made the 3rd edition, and the step release 3.5, so good, is character flexibility, variety of skills, and prestige classes. Albeit, with 3.5, they kind of got away with adding “core” classes (the base classes that everyone starts out with one of) to the point of distraction. But those could be handled on a case-by-case basis. All things have changed.
In the 4th edition, gone are the Bards, which DandD has struggled with getting right prior to the 3rd edition. Barbarians, Druids, and Monks have also disappeared. Druids and Monks have been with the game since the supplements of the original game. Gone are spell books and spells, replaced with a variety of powers. Skills have been revamped, reduced in scope to a few package sets, and you are limited in your access.
Alignments, which have been troublesome for some, and appreciated by others, have been revamped…and not for the better. Here is where I go political. The most notable alignment eliminated is Lawful-Evil. The rules refer to lawful-Good as being an ordered government being good society. Okay. How about Nazi Germany? It was an ordered government. Good for society? Not for the millions of Jews who were exterminated during the time of the Adolph Hitler. That is example #1 of a Lawful-Evil alignment. How about Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union? Some 20 million Russians dies at the hands of this murderous thug. The U.S.S.R was definiately a Lawful society, just as nazi Germany was a Lawful society. Lawful-Good? Not! The 20th century, and the dawning of the 21st century are full of examples of people who would, and should, be considered Lawful-Evil: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Validmir Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Muqtada al-Sadr, Ahmadinejad, Osama bin Ladin; just a few names to get you started. They all put together very ordered societies, with laws and rules (like Sharia Law in the case of al-Qaeda), and they all are responsible for the murder of thousands or millions, depending on which one of these thugs you look at, in the name of religion or government power.
So what happened to Lawful-Evil in DandD? Do these thugs get considered as the new “unaligned” alignment, as they are obviously neither Lawful-Good or Chaotic-Evil (both of which were retained). Has moral relativism taken over the game of DandD? Are DMs expected to show no difference, alignmentwise, between a fantasy kingdom that exterminates a part of its population for its religious views and one that allows freedom of religion?
Back to pure game evaluation. The new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons bears so little resemblance to the game that has been played by millions of people for nearly 40 years, one has to question why did they call it Dungeons and Dragons, and just what the hell are they thinking over there at Wizards of the Coast?
Tags:
Dungeons and Dragons Gaming DnD
Feedburner
2 Responses to “Take On DnD 4th Edition”
By James on Aug 29, 2008 | Reply
Well I agree with you very much but some of your examples are kind of bad. You put modern ethics too much into dnd, which I never cared for because it is fantasy. I have run games where nations did not have freedom of religion and slavery; those things are lawful-chaos inclined and not good-evil. It is how you act out religious persecution or how you treat your slaves that goes into the realm of good and evil. And yes, we can go on the dusty argument over the alignment system but ultimately it is a fantasy game which means that it is supposed to have these more “encoded” moral systems; it is what sets the tone for the battles that occur in a medieval fantasy game like DnD. And remember, it is medieval so some of your examples are anachronastic too the max. I think it is best you get the idea of drawing examples of the DnD alignment system from our world and just throw it out the window. We can both agree however that the alignment system and indeed all of 4e is not DnD; i do not care how many shitty games are rolled out each year, but to call this the successor to such a hallowed name is preposterious. Couldn’t they have just called it something else, like,”Rawr! Orcs!” or some nonchalant name like that. Druid and bard are going to be in “player 2 handbook.” which is pathetic when they plan to make another before they release the first one to make it clear their intention is to completely alienate from the gaming community. Yes, 3.5 is considered clunky by some but god damnit its DnD! It had features that set it apart from other fantasy games, and that was what we all know as DnD. 4E makes fantasy adventure so black and white and shitty. And do not get me started on trying to appeal to kiddies with shitty dragonborn races and angsty tieflings. What worse is both of these races embrace such lame stereotypes; the kind people make up JUST to be able to play a class that has horns. They are not even tieflings for christ sakes, they are a new race that hijacked the name and threw out the concept!
By Jaggez on Aug 31, 2008 | Reply
I gotta say I really miss the old one. I do not know why they call it DnD. I think they shoulda spent more time on it.