Still More Evidence
| Friday May 15, 2009 at 9:33am | gaming, rants | Comments (6) » |
...that D&D is going in a direction I don't like. It could just be that I'm unfairly biased against 4e (which i probably am) and so tend to look down on a lot of their marketing - and maybe i misinterpret things - but some things just rub me the wrong way. And I also know it's more what you *do* with it than what they tell you to do with it, but still. Often, I overlook such things, but when something strikes me as blatantly as this, I feel somehow compelled to respond - at least to myself.
On Penny Arcade, I just saw a banner ad which read:
Problems I have with this (these are actually all inter-related, but they break down into 3 broad points):
1) Product == fun (ala tabletop minis games, ccg's, etc). "If you want to play this guy, you pick up this box". One of the biggest strengths of the roleplaying hobby is that it doesn't require spending lots of money. The books are typically expensive, but really, while it's good for all the players to have a players book, a group really only *needs* one (I played for several months before I had any gaming books[/uphillbothways]). Here, it's telling me that I'll need something *else* to play their game, or at least to play it the "right" way. Oh, and so will all my friends. Oh, and the GM will probably need a bunch of these things to depict npc's, etc.
2) Stifle Creativity (ala video games). "Play the character you want. Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 1". What? The game is meant to have a near-infinite number of character possibilities. Do they also have a near-infinite number of miniatures to depict all possible combinations and styles? Doubtful. No, these are minis depicting the iconic characters from the books. What happened the the creativity of coming up with your *own* stuff? Now i'm expected to pick something from a store shelf to be "my" character? It's one thing to try to go find a mini that looks like your character because you *want* to - it's quite another to say "this guy looks cool, I think i'll play him".
3) Encourage Poor Roleplaying / Winning Is What Matters (ala mmorpgs) - "Never Split The Party". Ok, I know a lot of players who live by this mantra, but I personally hate it. Not because it's tactically unsound (which is generally their reasoning), but because it's unrealistic. No matter how much your characters like each other, sooner or later they're going to have things they want or need to do by themselves. It's one thing when you're in some cursed dungeon, it's quite another when you're in town or somewhere your characters would not expect trouble (even if the players are). The whole "Never split the party" idea makes me want to force them to roleplay bathroom breaks and then send a rabid krenshar after some character peeing in the woods. The players in my games are usually pretty good about this, but that's because most of them are there to roleplay, not simply "defeat" the challenges presented.
Ok, I'm done.
~PS
