Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

This is not D&D. It's a new game, not a particularly good one, with the D&D "logo" slapped on the front. Third Edition tinkered a little bit with the iconic elements of D&D, but could still be seen as an upgrade. For fourth edition however, all prior editions might as well have never existed. It is obvious that the publisher's driving motivation was to trade on the D&D label, while making absolutely certain that no prior edition products would be in any way useful for this game. Great way to alienate your entire market Hasbro. Thanks.

D&D continues to refine, define and improve the icon of all role playing games. 4th edition proves to be the best rendition of the game yet. It offers smoother combat mechanics, easy to "learn and play" rules and best of all a revamped and, gratefully, improved Magic system! And for classes, there are no more "to be avoided" classes as they are all good to play and balanced. Monsters in the series are easier to plan and run with the new streamlined system and its dependance on minitures to operate combat. And the Dungeons Master Guide, once relagated to the "other stuff" book, now actually tells you how to narrate the system and tips on how to be a better Dungeon Master! The only drawback to this otherwise superior system, is that it seems to have removed most of the background roleplaying aspects that rounded out a character, such as the Craft, Perform and even Ride skiils that were present in previous editions. But, given the overall improvement of the system, it's well worth the investment!

You can read all the bad decisions Hasbro made on this dog in other reviews, but to be susinct: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. I have never pre-judged any of the D&D editions, loved 3.5 despite the wave of initial anger over it, but this time the critics are right. This is a video game, not an RPG, not even a good wargame. It is dumbed down D&D and really, really, silly. It reads alomst as a parody of the game - it plays like a shadow of it.

Wow, it has been 20+ years since I felt the urge to write a letter to the creators of my favorite game. Back then I wrote to TSR in Lake Geneva to ask a simple rules question and got a hand typed letter back signed by the "Big Guy" himself. I was awed and shocked to get such a response.

Unfortunately this time I feel compelled to write not asking a simple question but to say a complicated good bye.

I have been playing since the very early days of TSR, since that time I have taken my D&D campaign everywhere with me; College, eight years flying around the world in the USMC, through the several moves across five states and now teaching the game to my three children. I am not the streotypical gamer, living in mom's basement and driving a 1977 AMC Pacer-wagon (though my Mom and Dad actually bought a powder blue one when I was in high school, needless to say I walked to school). I am a manager for a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation and make a very nice living at it. As such I have been able to collect over the years a rather large RPG library and have sitting on my desk almost every title WOTC has published, with the exception of the Eberron and Dragonlance series which I just not got into for one reason or antoher.

But now it appears that it time for us to part ways.

I purchased the new Fourth Edition rules and devoured them while on vacation. I read the books cover to cover and was completely disheartened at the end of my read. I could have cried. The game that I have played and loved since the 8th grade is dead. It hit me just as it did when GDW switched to the Traveller: New Era rules, the game I loved was gone and the publisher stumbled along with a similarly titled game that was but a shadow of the original.

When my wife, who after a year of MMORPG'ing has only recently switched to tabletop gaming, saw how distressed I was she picked up the books and started skimming through. Although a veteran of only a few D&D 3.5 sessions she too saw this was not the same game we had played with my kids. After an hour or so she looked over the top of the PHB and asked me, "Do you think the guys at World of Warcraft know WOTC stole their game?" We discussed the new rules for quite a while and I began to make a list of what I would need to change in my current campaign so that I could bring the kids into the new edition. That list soon turned into a list titled "GOOD CHANGES" and "BAD CHANGES", thinking I could simply devise some house rules or cobble the 3.5 rules into place where the new 4E rule went against the grain.

As the list progressed I soon found that there was little point.

Lets face it you have shifted your target audience away from gamers like me to the new generation who demand instant gratification and who find that grinding through the lower levels is beneath them. I have had a few of these types play in my games over the years, the "Dave Bozwell type" from Knights of the Dinner Table, who B.A. lures to the gaming table by giving him a +12 Hackmaster Sword as a first-level fighter. As a manager of a business I understand that you have to set your sights on where the money is in the marketplace and it is apparent that you are going after Blizzard's 9-million WoW subscribers.

I am sure you have read many of the naysayers on the forums and reviews of the new books on sites such as Amazon.com. While you will always have those who resist a change from a previous edition, I can honestly say that my objections to 4E are not because of some grognard stubbornness or wistful reminiscences for times gone by, but purely for mechanical and stylistic reasons.

Stylistic? Yes. The theme of the game has changed, the mood, the ambiance if you will. As an example, in the DMG on page 124 under monetary treasure the portion reads, "By the time characters reach epic level, they rarely see gold anymore." Hmmm, so do they shop at Epic Level merchants and eat at Epic Level taverns? When I read this I could just imagine every merchant in town with a hand written sign in their stall at the market "NOTHING LARGER THAN A SILVER PIECE". That would throw a loop into Mr. Tough Guy trying to buy 50' length of rope at the bazaar with an Astral Diamond. Clearly a case of catering to this new generation, and where do I even begin with the pandering to the "It's KEWL to be evil" crowd with the inclusion of the Dragonborn and Tiefling.

After all the years of my mother asking me when I am going to grow up and stop playing games, I am sorry to see that that time is here. I shouldn't say that I am going to stop, that is not true. My campaign will continue, sadly though without your support. I purchased the DMG and PHB the first day they were released with every intention of continuing my support of WOTC and 4E only to find that I was left behind. It all happened so fast I wasn't prepared to say good bye, but now after a few weeks of reading and re-reading the 4E material I have been able to justify my position and can now finally come to grips with the fact that this is the end of an era.

I borrowed a copy of this and the PHB from someone and read the pair of them from cover to cover just so I could say that I had read them. I've got all the 3rd edition books (some of which I wish I hadn't bought). Even if I had liked what I read in 4e I wouldn't drop 3.5 to play it simply because, for me and my group, 3.5 isn't broken and we've invested too much and effort into it to drop it for another system. 4e is, as many here have said, Wizards' desperate attempt to appeal to all those kiddies who'd rather be playing WoW or some other MMORG. They're clever buggers though. They raped an rpg called Earthdawn for 3rd edition, why not do the same to the most popular video game of the day. Im sure it'll work for them on the money side. It made them rich with 3.5. Im wondering what Wrath of the Lich King will do to their sales though. Who wants to play WoW without the graphics?
4e? Its a streamlined, dumbed down, annoyingly uncomplicated DnD. Gone are all the cool things I love about 3.5. Where 3.5 allows for an endless array of characters, 4e looks to me to be not unlike WoW characters who come in about 3 versions per class, one of which is always going to be toted as the best 'build'.
I've heard a lot of people criticize 3.5 over wizards having spells per day and it being limiting. I play a lot of successful wizards and I never have a problem. 4e though has spells that per day, per encounter, per round, etc. That's no less absurd to me. What the heck is a per encounter spell? That's absurd. What if the encounter is 1 rd and the next 25 rds? Not to mention they removed spells from the game. Its just sad.
Thank you Wizards for 3.5. I don't need this latest dire wolf in WoW's clothing.