4Dventure?

[Lilac]

Seems like WotC has an announcement to make, it's Gen Con, and there's a timer here.

[Lilac]

I guess someone at WotC screwed up, it's fourth edition

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3702448&postcount=217

[kongming]

I thought it might be 4th Ed. I was also really hoping they wouldn't be talking about that for a few years to come. For one thing, I still have new 3Ed books. For another, Frank and K are halfway through their enormous project of making 3rd Edition actually work, and I'd play any number of "Frank and K" Edition games than a 4th Ed one.

[Vekseid]

Well, there is also True20, which apparently was designed to preempt this sort of thing.

[Max]

I thought it might be 4th Ed. I was also really hoping they wouldn't be talking about that for a few years to come. For one thing, I still have new 3Ed books. For another, Frank and K are halfway through their enormous project of making 3rd Edition actually work, and I'd play any number of "Frank and K" Edition games than a 4th Ed one.

I had heard that they were working on a Fourth Edition.  And people wonder why I don't like D&D anymore.

[kongming]

Well, I've read about some of the stuff that they've either leaked or outright told people. Here's some of what we can look forward to/dread:

SAGA: I don't know much about that one. But apparently i involves skills working a lot differently, and instead of having HP, you have condition tracks. If that means the White Wolf damage system, that's a bad thing.

Compatible: Apparently, it's still more or less a D20 game, so is probably compatible. To a degree.

Levels: Apparently thirty of them for the core system. Whether this is good or bad will likely depend on whether they actually playtest all levels, unlike 3rd Edition.

Fighters: Looks like fighters will more or less be replaced by the Warblade from Tome of Battle, but renamed Fighter. So they get actual class features, stuff that's equivalent to spells. This means they might even be playing the same game as spellcasters (whereas in 3rd Edition it is a fact that fighters can't compete without the "DM Pity" artifact weapons at high levels).

Abilities: Sounds like a lot of stuff will be either at will (the Warlock) or "per encounter" (Tome of Battle), instead of "per day". If they do this, it's a good thing. Also sounds like most abilities will be chosen from lists/trees, instead of "You are this level. You get this ability. Whether it's suitable or not." If these are the sucktastic talent trees from D20 modern, this is bad, and everyone will stick with the full casters. If it's something more like Tome of Battle, this will be a good thing.

Races: They were going to make your race have a huge impact all the way through, where you'd get racial benefits at levels aside from 1st. This'd mean they could boot out the stupid Level Adjustment system and just hand out the racial abilities of powerful monsters at levels when they're not so special. But then they changed their mind. You get most of the stuff at first level, but can just choose to take race-specific feats and abilities as you go along. This might not be so bad still.

So that's actually a lot of information that's been released, while at the same time still not really telling us anything.

To be fair on WotC, they had to make it eventually - businesses don't make money by not making new stuff, after all. Bands do that, by putting new names on the same things over and over *coughs*Linkin Park and Evanescence*coughs* So really, it had to be expected eventually. I just didn't want it to be so soon, and can't really muster any enthusiasm for it. Whereas I think the completely free work created by Frank and K in their limited spare time is awesome. It actually fixes problems, makes you go "I have this cool image of _____, I want to play that!", and also explains things about most settings.

[HairyHeretic]

Hmm. I had a quick look at the Saga Star Wars, and it looks interesting. Sounds like they're planning the same thing here. Might be worth picking up the core books, as I never really bothered much with 3 or 3.5