Well, there’s a new D&D edition being launched today. Again.

Today is the official Worldwide Dungeon & Dragons Game Day as professed on the wizards.com website. I started playing in 1981, so I’ve been there for the launch of 2e, 3e, and (cough cough) 3.5e. Has anyone noticed that the longevity of each revised version is decreasing like a half-life? On this pace, we can expect to see 5e by Spring ‘09. My own pessimism is that these revisions are for business reasons primarily. TSR’s business strategy was to create as many modules and game worlds as possible. Hasbro’s tactic seems to be re-issuing the three core rulebooks every few years in a new version. After all, those are the best sellers.

I’ve been checking in on the Wizard’s website every day and I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed when the home page counter reached zero. I was hoping for some double column photo spread or something similar, but no. Wizards should take a cue from ESPN.com. When someone wins a national championship, they completely revise their home page with a massive photo spread across the entire website. Very exciting, very compelling.

The Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day. Some marketing guy at Wizards has been working overtime on that one. I think I heard Obama mention it on his candidacy acceptance speech.

OK, my own personal cynicism aside from the business-side of role playing, I believe that a rules reset is absolutely necessary if only to erase and undo all of the barely tested, poorly developed supplements that allow players to create the Super character. With 3e and 3.5e that crack in the armor was the easy multi-classing, feats, and prestige classes. They were exactly what the min-maxers out there would lump all of these together in a witches’ brew to come up with a class that can sneak attack on their favored opponent with a fireball in their barbarian rage. So you’d have game designers churning out new and exciting products that topped the previous ones to keep people buying.

This got to a critical mass particularly in 2e with the point system in Skills & Powers. Combine that with the crazy campaign worlds floating around (i.e. Dark Sun) and you’d have players’ desperately lobbying to play their 22 Str Mule custom built Fighter in Forgotten Realms with pouty lip and arms stubbornly crossed (true story).

So with that in mind, let me address the new rules. 4e is dramatically different than any other previous edition primarily because of the class powers, except for the late end 3.5e in a few key supplements that has been well documented on other sites. After E.G.G. released AD&D, the continuing theme for the last 30 years has been to simplify the rules in each new edition. I’m a proponent of this trend.

I have to say there are a lot of things that I think they got right. For instance, I love the new troll. I always hated the plant-creature, carrot nose, green beanstalk. That iteration of the troll was purely a creation of D&D and had no basis in folklore or myth whatsoever. I didn’t mind that kind of monster, but call it something else and give us the real iconic Troll. Point being the Monster Manual is excellent, my favorite of all of the books. I was actually creating a matrix of monsters (goblins, ogres, and hobgoblins) on my own to capture a multi-role, complementary mix of monsters within the same race.

This was for two reasons. First, I don’t play Warhammer, but I’ve got a few of the supplements and I like how they created a monster hierarchy within an army. And secondly, there are a few senior role players in my group that naturally have every monster memorized and plan their tactics based on those assumptions. For example, a sleep spell will work on an ogre … because it has 4HD. Of course, I add a few levels of warrior just to piss them off. The key being that each monster entry was the minimum/average of their race. The 4e Monster Manual captures this perfectly.

Monster Manual: 4.5 stars (I selfishly wanted more of the iconic monsters or utility creatures such as natural creatures in this edition)

For the Player’s Handbook, I get the feeling that this book is half-completed. Nearly all of the 300+ pages are dedicated to melee combat. It seems that what is most noticeable is the stuff that is not there. Spells or abilities to be used outside of combat or other core classes, such as the specialist wizard, monk, or barbarian. I get the feeling that a PhB 2 should be underway already and released prior to 2009.

Rituals have been setup as non-adventuring tools, something you do at the home base or headquarters. I agree that wizards and clerics were way too powerful compared to the martial classes at the higher levels, particularly epic. Fighters were getting extra epic feats every few levels to garner a natural AC bonus or DR, while wizard are learning to summon a fleet of ancient red wyrms. Hmmm. So the balancing is a good thing, though most of my players have proclaimed that spellcasters were “nerfed”. BTW, I hate that term. Overused and plagiarized cleverness.

The powers are cool. Definitely. But as a DM, you have to be able to arbitrate, mediate, and judicate all of these freaking powers which means you have to read, read, read. This in addition to all of the reading and preparation that comes with the job already. For instance, it would take about 10 minutes to figure out what a 1st level rogue was capable of doing in combat. But now its going to take 30 minutes to work through the At-Will, Utility, Daily, and Encounter powers. But the rogue and ranger needed fixing and they got it in spades. So I’m not complaining … more of a pathetic whine for the over-worked DM.

Player’s Handbook: 3.5 stars (I wanted more non-combat stuff in there, though I was surprised to see the magical items in there)

The Dungeon Master’s Guide is probably the most useless and unread book in D&D history, starting with the epic tome of trivial miscellany of 1st edition. With the magical items pulled, there are probably only 15 pages that are required reading – rewards and building encounters. So I won’t give you a detailed review on it as I’m not intending to read it anytime soon with all of the work and study required of the PhB powers.

Dungeon Master’s Guide: 2 stars

Overall, great artwork (big fan of WAR) and production. I’m wary though as the chink in this edition are the powers and paragon classes, that I can see half-wits in the “end-of-the-half-life” supplements cranking out some doozies. I’m also very excited about Gleemax and D&D Insider. I live in Australia and all of my players are in the USA. OpenRPG, being that its free and developed by volunteers, just wasn’t cutting it.

Our first 4e session starts this week. Enjoy!