08.20.07

On Dungeons and Dragons

Posted in Essay Week, Gaming, Rants, Writing at 7:21 am

Essay Week 2007 runs from August 20 to August 24, 2007. Each day I’ll present a short essay on a topic of concern to me; as you may already have noticed, though, I have the option of including a pre-essay post giving updates on ongoing life events if necessary. Some of the elements in these essays may be controversial; I hope, however, that most will be well-regarded and at least read with an open mind. If you have anything to say about them, please feel free to leave a comment; I read them all, even if I may not respond due to time or other concerns. I start off, then, with a somewhat lighter in tone essay on the recent announcement of D&D Fourth Edition.

Last week, Wizards of the Coast announced the May 2008 release of the D&D Player’s Handbook, Fourth Edition. As has been stated in numerous other sources, this is the first new reboot of the core rules in eight years, but WotC is emphasizing that it’s an “evolutionary, not revolutionary” change. While it’s not exactly been something I do often or talk about terribly frequently, I have been known to get polyhedral on occasion; as such, I’m still kind of conflicted about this.

Let me set the frame of reference, here: When I grew up, 2nd Edition was the big thing. From the late 80s through to when I actually started buying the books myself, that was pretty much it. My friend up the hill Jeremy got me into it initially, and he’d been running the Al-Qadim boxed set. I eventually got to do some 2nd edition play in and around college as time went on, and when I got out of college, the 3rd Edition books were just hitting their stride. But, I cut my proverbial teeth on THAC0, Greyhawk, and the tales of Drizz’t.

This is, of course, disregarding the fact that the first tabletop system I actually understood and really knew how to play was RIFTS. And that’s where my conflict lies.

Let’s be honest here, as systems went, 2nd Edition was more than a little clunky and non-intuitive. Also, it suffered a bit from the huge number of seemingly incompatible settings, though attempts to unify these (specifically, Spelljammer and Planescape) would later come. That said, it retained a lot of what made the game quite appealing; and when I finally got my hands on the 3rd Edition set, I was more than a little disappointed to know that the settings I’d started with (Al-Qadim and Spelljammer) were completely discontinued. 3rd Edition’s rules were much simpler, much easier to understand– but by extension, this also made them much easier to misinterpret or to mis-adjust. 3.5 fixed that to a certain extent, but at the cost of increasing complexity.

And that’s the key to the conflicting emotions, right there. Viscerally, I don’t much care for the concept of a 4th Edition– I can only presume that this is what old hands felt at the end of 1999, when 3rd was announced. I’m invested in 3/3.5, I don’t want to re-spend the money. Intellectually, however, I know that this isn’t going to be a complete break as 2nd to 3rd was. Any incompatibilities should be able to be intuitively and independently resolved by players/GMs (should– I have no confirmation as to whether or not this is the case; presumably it would at least be compatible with the d20 System). More than that, we’re still a good nine months away from any of it even being released and almost a year away from the core set being fully available (if I were WotC, I would launch the GM Manual first, rather than last). It’s way, way too early to make any judgement.

Still, you know what? I’m excited. Despite my initial misgivings and my apprehension at learning yet another new system (I know people who still play 2nd Edition), I think 4th Edition is a good thing in theory. Streamlining the rules even further, getting more of the mechanics out of the way in favor of emphasizing storytelling and real roleplaying… that could only be good for the system. One of the biggest draws to the White Wolf games, for me, anyway, is how they’re not completely focused on hack-and-slash. I’m not much for brute force. If and when D&D manages to hit that balance between mechanics and aesthetics, I’ll gladly dive into 4th and not look back.

Part of that, then, is also related to the GMs I’ve played with. Predominantly, I’ve participated in campaigns where fighting and combat took center stage, and as I’ve said I prefer to be a bit more hands-off when it comes to battle. (In that regard, I could barely be said to even be roleplaying, as I tend to avoid conflict wherever I can in general.) When I’ve GMed (often disastrously), I’ve always placed more of an emphasis on puzzles and NPC interaction than on straight hack-and-slash kill-’em-all. As said, these sessions lost steam pretty quickly because a) the players I was with didn’t like not having stuff to kill, and b) I insisted on using the somewhat horrid d20 Modern system as opposed to a mainstream ruleset like straight D&D. I hope to retry my hand at the GM business soon– and yes, I’m finally dumping the ‘Seth Mythos’ campaign and d20 Modern completely; I’m still thinking about what I want to do within plain D&D or Forgotten Realms, but it’s not going to be a present-day system.

This all is well and good, but there’s also the aspect of D&D being considered the pinnacle of geekiness, a social poison that instantly invalidates one’s ability to ever successfully manage any interpersonal relations. It’s actually kind of telling, I think, that this negative connotation of the game (and role-playing in general) is predominant today as opposed to the late 20th-century trope of devil-worshipping tabletop nut who was but one shaky step away from a random [blank]icide (take your pick). To an extent, yes, the “nerdier-than-thou” attitude is certainly relevant; I know of many people who are fixated solely on tabletop gaming to the true exclusion of almost all else. But, is it really all that different than someone fixated on a major league sport or a mainstream television show? I think the level of obsession and introversion shown by certain fans of, say, the Steelers or Lost matches or outstrips the singlemindedness of some role-players. I find it a bit hard to accept the ritual mocking of someone wearing a d20-emblazoned shirt, when someone wearing a shirt with a particularly unflattering portrait of, say, Jorge Garcia can walk around unassailed.

I leveled invective at Lost in that paragraph because personally, I don’t get the attraction. Which explains my point quite nicely. D&D, and gaming in general, is still a nascent medium, and widely misunderstood. It’s stood on the edges of the mainstream for years– decades, actually– and even now still is struggling to gain full acceptance. Television, however, is somewhat of a more mature medium (in terms of its acceptance; with respect to its content, I would like to respectfully decline comment), and sports even more so. I can understand the inherent xenophobia of society, but there has got to be a point at which it ends. There has got to be a point at which the world as a whole stops being terrified of everything new and unfamiliar and starts to take a plunge into the unknown on a more regular basis. There might be comfort in the old, but there’s most definitely glory in the new.

Perhaps it’s a little overoptimistic to think that the 4th Edition rules might be the push needed to bring Dungeons and Dragons out of the basement and into a rose-colored spotlight. Still, a little optimism here and there never hurt anyone.

Permalink