Who's Getting Screwed by 5e?

4e gamers, that's who.

There has been a lot of talk about D&D Next in the blogosphere of late. Now to begin with, I really must emphasize that I have no horse in this race. I have my Labyrinth Lord and I am happy. I have no reason to spend money on a new iteration of D&D regardless of what exactly goes into it. I am NOT a "hater," I am just completely ambivalent about 5e, much as I was about 4e.

Yet with what I can glean from the recent blog posts -- I am not participating in the 5e playtest myself, so all this is secondhand hearsay mind you -- I find myself in the surprising position of feeling a great deal of sympathy for all the 4e devotees out there. Let me explain why.

My basic position is similar to the (much better informed and credible) one recently explicated in an open letter to WotC Labgrrl posted on her blog, UAD&D. (Thanks to David Maccauley for the link to that post.) Labgrrl writes:

"Immediately upon hearing rumors of #DnDNext, a significant number of fans of the current edition began to get confrontational and disheartened in social media. They feel abandoned despite repeated assurances by the WOTC social networking team and even some uninvolved third parties that continued new releases will happen. Their general view seems to be that there is limited point in investment in further books and materials when it’s going to be rendered useless so rapidly.

"The problem with planned obsolescence is that it can create huge feelings of ill-will towards a company [and] when the economy is doing poorly or is in recovery, planned obsolescence backlash increases dramatically."

Labgrrl's comments remind me of a conversation I had with the manager of my FLBS a few days ago. He asked me if D&D changed drastically every time there was an edition change; he seemed particularly interested in the shift between 1e and 2e. While noting that 2e is the one edition of D&D I have never played, so I am not terribly familiar with it, I nevertheless explained to him that, in my view, I didn't see 2e as drastically altering the core rules set forth in the earlier editions. Sure, it added skills and proficiencies, which were either nonexistent or only minimally present in earlier editions, but it did not radically alter the core classes or the main thrust of the rules, as far as I know. In my view, the main changes 2e instituted were to streamline the presentation of the rules, change the dominant style of the artwork, and to santize D&D vis-a-vis its alleged demonic/Satanic content. (Please correct me in the comments if I have this wrong.)

So IF we assume that 0e through 2e were BASICALLY the same system, that's a 26-year run (1974-2000) of more or less completely compatible stuff. Hell, I am even willing to lump 3e/3.5e/Pathfinder in there because despite its major emphasis on skills and feats and hence character "builds," 3e is still ESSENTIALLY a d20 system that hadn't yet introduced player appeasement measures like healing surges, and hadn't severely shifted the game's emphasis from strategy to tactics. So that would give us a 34-year run of more or less compatible systems, before "strikers" and "defenders," the absolute necessity of battle mats, and the near-impossibility of PC death set in in 2008.

Even if we keep 3e/3.5 partitioned off as its own thing, those players (of which I was one for about four years) at least had an eight-year run before 4e was introduced, and after that they had (and still have) Pathfinder and Paizo.

By contrast, the 4e players have had only four years with their edition of choice. And, as far as I know, no guarantee of major corporate support for the edition once it is discontinued by WotC.

Justin Alexander's analysis reveals that 5e's playtest version evinces a strong hearkening back to 3e, and he asks why he would want to play what is essentially WotC's homebrew of 3e when he could just keep playing his own? It's a good question, and I would also ask, if 5e indeed ends up being really close to 3e rules-wise, what will keep the Pathfinder crowd from continuing to play Pathfinder, whose (expensive) rulebooks they already own? This is a recession after all, and sadly it is distinctly possible that "those jobs aren't coming back."

Daniel Proctor supports this view in his commentary, stating that:

"[D&D Next] has to compete with all the other 3.x spinoffs that have been evolving for many years. What can 5e meaningfully add that hasn't already been done? I think that's why D&D 5e feels like an also-ran at this point. The days where the Brand alone was enough are past."

In slightly more concise (and vehement) terms, Biting Halfling over at Tenkar's Tavern called 5e's playtest iteration "a stripped down rebuild of 3rd Edition D&D + exactly four innovations." Again, I cannot confirm these views through my own direct experience of the playtest, nor am I here to judge whether or not 5e will be any good. It's just that it seems like 5e, in returning to WotC's 3e roots, will leave 4e players out in the cold; the 4e crowd -- i.e., WotC's most loyal current customer base -- will be those precisely most screwed by the changes made to bring 5e into closer relationship to the pre-4e editions. This is a strange scenario that may well indicate a kind of limited victory for we old-school gamers, but which also seems to indicate a mild form of corporate schizophrenia on WotC's part, as Labgrrl so eloquently surmises.

Going the way of the Dodo.

Epilogue: My One Gripe
I suppose that while I am here I will add a brief comment about the one thing I do not like the sound of in those secondhand playtest reports: the tendency in 4e and 5e to make it well nigh impossible for PCs to die.

The real threat of character death makes puts something serious at stake, and (in my view) encourages smart play rather than relentless tactical hack-and-slash. The 4e-and-onward editions seem to encourage "low death, low frustration"-style play, as Roger the GS puts it, noting that in 5e "hit points are numerous, the margin of safety for low-level characters is great, and healing remains as available as in 4th edition."

Jeff Rients shares my disdain for this kind of "softening" of D&D, noting that "abstract 'healing surges' are about the most boring game mechanic ever."

More recently, Rients continued his ruminations on this issue, bemoaning the fact that in 4e and 5e "my own personal D&D sweet spot, the hard-scrabble death-at-any- moment fiasco of levels 1-3, is no longer supported. [. . .] For me, all other questions about what should and shouldn't be in the new edition pale in comparison to this simple issue. If by the numbers I can't murder your starting PC with a single lousy orc-stab, I don't want to play."

Patrick Wetmore echoes this concern in his recent post, in which he asks "What kind of delicate flowers have modern D&D players become?"

I totally acknowledge that it's "different strokes for different folks," yet I wonder the same thing Patrick does. Just last week, I introduced about five neophyte gamers to Labyrinth Lord; I started them at 1st Level and ran them through (most of) Tim Shorts' Knowledge Illuminates. During the short (3-hour) session, one PC was killed outright and another reduced to 1 hp. Something was very much at stake for that party; after their elf died, they were much more cautious, and really used that 10-foot pole that somebody thought to buy. I really loved seeing that; a classic D&D situation all the way!

So in the end, I am forced to agree with Dan Proctor, who writes:

"Criticize 3rd edition all you like (and I have), but it was a pretty successful edition. The problem is that when WotC left an edition behind they didn't just revise the game into something else, they torched and salted the fields behind them each time. Each time they tell their customers that there is something fundamentally broken and bad with the previous edition, and in doing so they create a rift between the people who stay behind with the old edition and the people who take the bait for the new edition."

An Afterthought
Was 4e released under the OGL? In other words, could it be retro-cloned?

Christopher Reeve's Penny

In the classic time-travel romance movie Somewhere in Time, the protagonist, played by Christopher Reeve, hypnotizes himself so he can travel backwards in time to 1912, the period in which an actress he is obsessed with lives. All is well until at one point late in the film, he breaks the hypnotic spell that allows him to exist in the past by accidentally glimpsing a penny from his own time: as synopsized on Wikipedia,

[Reeve's character Richard Collier] reaches into [his pocket] and finds a shiny new Lincoln penny with a mint date of 1979. Seeing an item from his real present wrenches him out of his hypnotically-induced time trip, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards with Elise screaming his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably out of 1912.

I think that certain game mechanics act like that penny for me: they obtrude into my immersive game experience and pull me out of the game world as I want to inhabit it. The particular concepts or mechanics that create this effect are purely idiosyncratic to me, and are admittedly based upon my own early experiences with the RPG'ing hobby. They may even designate me as a curmudgeon. If so, so be it.

I raise this issue because I am doing my best to motivate myself to return to the regular teen gaming group I first visited a few weeks ago, but I am having trouble. And I admit that my reticence is in large part because the group plays D&D IV. This is NOT a rant against that system in general, and believe me when I say that I really do wish that I could be as mature as Christian and simply "be quiet and play the [4e] game to my best ability and to do my best to be a good participant, even though it lacks many structural and thematic events that I prefer." But I struggle, because for me, simply hearing the words "healing surge" or "daily power" at a game session does to me what that penny did to poor Christopher Reeve: it sends me "rushing backwards, pulled inexorably" out of the world of the game. I want to rise above such pettiness, but I am finding it quite difficult -- as The Happy Whisk asks in Christian's comments, "Why are you playing a game you don't enjoy?"*

Why indeed?

Of course, I have an answer to that question: because I want to convert said D&D group to the Old Ways, to get them playing Labyrinth Lord. And I may be able to get back in there and stick it out long enough to accomplish that goal, assuming the group is willing to go there. But right now I am really struggling. I am not proud of this, but there it is.

And for the Joesky tax:

Penny of Retrieval
The Penny of Retrieval is a very rare item thought to have been created by insane wizard Alaxxx Leprongo Kulikkx. This unassuming-looking copper coin (worth 1 cp if not recognized as magical) automatically returns one teleported or gated being to its point of origin. All the being must do is look at the coin, and s/he or it is instantaneously transported back to the place from which s/he or it was first gated or teleported. The coin works equally well within one dimension or interdimensionally, and functions whether or not the user is aware of its presence or function. In fact, the Penny of Retrieval is often slipped into a dimensional traveler's pockets without his/her/its prior knowledge.

--
* Just so you don't think I am picking on D&D IV exclusively here, allow me to mention that ascending AC is another such "penny" for me -- the penny that has so far kept me from playing Swords and Wizardry despite my immense respect for that game.  Just seeing ascending AC figures in the S&W White Box booklets somehow ruins the vibe for me. [EDIT: I am eating those latter words now.]

Playing D&D IV With Teenagers

This past Saturday I visited my local public library in order to sit in on an ongoing D&D IV game. Of course, I am not super-thrilled with the established group's rule system of choice, but I am trying to build up my network as a public rpg'er so I felt it was important to make an initial connection with this particular gang. I am very glad I did.

The facilitator / DM, a really cool dude named Brandon, warned me ahead of time that he and I would be the two oldest people there -- I think Brandon may be in his 20's and I turn 40 this August. Indeed, the weekly event is listed on the library's website as "Dungeons & Dragons (Grades 6-12)," so its intended demographic primarily encompasses adolescents and teenagers.

The group's descriptive blurb on the Public Library "Programs" website says:

"Be a part of this amazing story-creating game. Join the group, build your character and set out on a fantastic quest or adventure. Play D&D with other teens instead of on your computer!"

Well put!

To be super-clear, my participation with Brandon's younger RPG'ing group is intended as a SEPARATE enterprise from the monthly public Labyrinth Lord game for which I am currently laying groundwork at my local bookshop. I will keep you updated on my progress with THAT project in separate future posts.

No, this group has already been playing together for a couple of years. In fact, I am in some ways being brought in as a ringer: Brandon wants me to take over the DM'ing reins at some point so that he can spend some time in the group as a player.

The group itself was a real kick in the pants. Funny and smart young people ranging from maybe 13 years old to 16 years old (that's a guess, though one guy actually told me he was 13). They know the 4e rules quite well, so I will (as usual) lag behind them a bit in rules mastery. But they won't care -- they are there to role-play and have fun.

Brandon is a very good DM -- he has invented a unique campaign scenario (involving all the reptilian and insectoid races uniting against all the mammalian ones) in which the players seem quite invested. They relished bringing me up to date about their campaign, telling me whose character hated whom, and which of the NPC villains were the party's worst enemies. It was great fun.

I did not even technically enter play at last Saturday's session. It took me an hour to generate a character -- a human cleric named Brother Zod -- and the current PCs never finished the encounter penultimate to their running into me and another new player. So I will join in "officially" next week. But I still had a blast watching these younger players get immersed in the game.

As for my future plans with the library group, I will play along in the 4e campaign for awhile, until we get to know each other, then when Brandon is ready for me to DM, we will actually switch rules systems. There is no way -- and I warned Brandon of this going in -- that I would be willing to run anything but an "old-school" rules system like Labyrinth Lord or Mutant Future. (Like ChicagoWiz says, I am allowed to say "no" and set limits on what I'll do.)

In fact, now that I have met the players, I am particularly tempted to expose this group to Mutant Future. I think MF's gonzo style and randomness will keep the library group's interest piqued. Plus it is the same basic mechanic as LL so if they want to swap over to straight fantasy, it will be a gentle transition to my preferred rule system.

We will see -- baby steps. But I am excited to have found a group of younger gamers to potentially introduce to the Old Ways.

Equally Valuable But Certainly Different

I was reading my friend Carl's blog this weekend, intrigued by the post where he claims that

I run a Mutant Future (heavily houseruled) game, and I run a D&D 4e (heavily houseruled) game, and I play in a Labyrinth Lord (+AEC, heavily houseruled game)... and guess what. IN PLAY, the experience is exactly the same in all three. And of course, the experience is totally different.

While I am completely in agreement with Carl's general point, that "the differences of edition are trivial compared to the commonalities experienced at the table," I still do feel that different rules systems do produce slightly different gaming experiences. Perhaps not radically different ones, but different ones nonetheless. For me, there is a palpable difference between a game that has "healing surges" and one that doesn't, one that has "tieflings" and one that doesn't. This may, as Carl suggests, be a matter of houseruling, or simply my own curmudgeonly partisanship shining through, though I would say (as I have said before) that the actual rules mechanics you play with DO have a noticeable impact on what kind of game play occurs at the table.

I have debated this point with Carl before -- see comments here -- and he and I have a healthy "agree to slightly disagree" pact on this. Looking back over those comments from late November, I really like the way our back-and-forth brings out some very interesting points about the role of the rules system vs. the role of DM style and houseruling. I want to contribute a few more good-natured thoughts to the ongoing discussion of this topic, in order to

(a) voice my total support of Carl's community-building premises, i.e., that "the differences of edition are trivial compared to the commonalities experienced at the table" and that "the final product of houseruling plus the old school game system of choice is far closer to the current iterations (Pathfinder, 4e) of D&D than most of the OSR would care to admit"

and

(b) reiterate my view about the role of rules systems (and to explain why I suspect that edition differences DO matter at least sometimes) via a driving metaphor.

To start off, a recent post by Al Krombach has forced me to re-evaluate how different 4e might actually be from older editions, or at least to reconsider when those differences vis-a-vis original edition D&D began to take shape. In short, did min-maxing begin with 1e AD&D?

Al writes that 1e AD&D

moved the bonuses for [attribute] scores to the higher end of the score range. A 13, which got you a +1 to-hit and damage in B/X, got you squat in AD&D; you needed a 17, a much rarer ability score (see the no-doubt peyote-fueled bell-curve and mathematical discourse on DMG pg10) to get that +1 to-hit and damage. This new element of D&D would help add yet another new element: min-maxing! You usually needed higher scores to even play one of the nifty new classes AD&D offered like the Assassin, Monk, or Ranger. And, no one wanted a sucky fighter with no bonuses to hit, or a thief with no bonus to AC, or so on. So, a way had be invented to provide players with a means of getting higher ability scores. Interestingly, the "need" to min-max must have been apparent very early on, as Gygax takes time to introduce ways of getting those higher ability scores (DMG pg11), stating "it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires". Note the word "viable", which means "doesn't suck".

Al notes what a major departure this was from earlier editions of D&D:

Before AD&D the dice fell as they would: maybe you got a 7 strength and a 16 wisdom, and no matter how much you might've felt like running a super-strong Gilgamesh-type hero, you were stuck with either a weak fighter or a decent cleric. Now [with AD&D] you could roll strength six times and unless you were pretty unlucky, you were going to get something you wanted.

Wow! So maybe Carl is right, that 4e is not such a radical shift from earlier editions when we note this transition away from the "old-school" sensibility already underway in the 1e DMG.

But why, then, do I find D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder combat and feat resolution so time-consumingly dull?  Is it possible to have empathy for a system (which I do, greatly, for Pathfinder, since I actually had some great times playing it and I like Paizo and their fan-centric vibe) yet to not want to play it?  Do edition differences matter?  (Again, I ask this question analytically, not evaluatively.)

A recent post by A Paladin in Citadel mentioned that Paladin had played in a 4e game only to discover that

I find 4E to be too mechanical and combat-centric for my tastes.

Carl commented that

My experience with 4e and every other edition is that the group and DM determine exactly how much combat is the focus of the game. If the DM wants to feed encounter after encounter to a group willing to hack and slash, then sure, any edition is combat centric. If the group wants to talk, or find alternate solutions to problems, adopts a "fight as a last resort and usually in self defense" policy, gets involved in political intrigue between factions, etc... then any edition is not focused on combat.

This line of reasoning, while correct in terms of the overall game play experience, is not directly relevant to how combat itself (or other actions governed specifically by the rules, like chargen) feels or plays within the different systems. My guess is that Paladin feels that 4e is too "combat-centric" NOT because it forces 4e games to be all about melee combat, but because ONCE YOU DO ENTER COMBAT it is quite sophisticated and detailed, and therefore takes longer to resolve. Sure, Carl is right, players and DMs can choose to play combat-heavy or combat-lite D&D regardless of edition; but I argue that what happens once the party actually enters a tactical situation definitely feels different -- and takes different amounts of time to adjudicate -- depending upon the rules system one uses.

It's like this:

 
I grew up in Seattle, and learned to drive there. When I was growing up, my parents only had stick-shift cars, so manual transmission is I what I learned on. Downtown Seattle is steeply hilled, and there are certain stoplights on those hilly streets that one comes to dread when one is a novice stick-shift driver, because once you are stopped at such a light on the downhill side waiting for it to turn green, you realize that as soon as it changes, you have to remove your foot from the brake for an awful split-second as you move your foot over to jam on the accelerator as you pop the car into gear. Even highly experienced drivers quite used to manual clutches get to test their mettle in such a scenario -- there is ALWAYS a slight roll backwards in that split-second before the clutch engages and the car surges forward, up the hill.

James St., downtown Seattle.

This moment of releasing the brake and rolling backward (potentially into the car right behind you) is something that drivers of automatic transmission cars simply never have to deal with. They just push the gas and go, no terrifying split-second roll backwards for them at all. Unless those drivers have driven or ridden in a manual-transmission car on a similar hill, they will not even know of this phenomenon that so haunts the manual-clutch driver on certain stoplights on steep hills in Seattle.

Now take the same experienced driver in two different cars, one automatic, one stick-shift. That driver can do everything in his or her power to make the automatic transmission car drive just like the stick-shift one, and vice-versa, and under certain circumstances, like the open highway, he or she might succeed. But if that driver ever comes to a stoplight on a steep hill in Seattle, no amount of driver style or finesse is going to change the fact that an automatic transmission car will simply hold its position on the slope, and the stick-shift will not, once the brake is released for that harrowing split-second. In other words, in certain conditions, each type of car is going to reveal its nature, even in the hands of the same, incredibly experienced driver.

Similarly, 4e combat is 4e combat. It does not rule out or discourage great roleplaying nor does it dictate a combat-o-centric playing style. But it governs combat and tactical situations in a specific way that does feel and function differently from other editions of D&D.

Is this sufficient grounds for those of us who prefer older editions to be 4e (or even Pathfinder) "haters"? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Does it point to the fact that even though individual DMs and players do indeed heavily influence what happens in their games, nevertheless the game experience cannot be "exactly the same" from edition to edition? Absolutely.

This is NOT an incitement to Edition War, nor a rebuttal of what I take to be Carl's main point, that "we should all be friends and appreciate our commonalities." Agreed! But this is a plea that we remember that "all being friends" means tolerating each others' differences, including edition preference, NOT insisting that those differences do not exist or that they can be erased given the presence of the right DM.

This has also been a bit of a rant; so, following the Joesky Protocol, here is my offering:

Ring of Alignment Change
This ring functions as a +1 Ring of Protection but also has another, more subtle (cursed) function.  Once someone dons the ring, it cannot be  removed for 1d6 weeks; over the course of those weeks, the being's alignment will gradually shift from its current state to one other randomly-determined alignment.  Optionally the DM may choose the alignment to which the ring-wearer shifts.  In any case, this shift is irreversible by any means, and the being must now act and behave in accordance with the dictates of the new alignment.  The ring continues to function as a +1 Ring of Protection at all times, but can alignment-shift each being only once.

Edition War vs. Edition Preference, or, Form Matters

Reading James M's recent post about the significance of D&D III in his evolution as a gamer, I was struck by the parallels between his story and mine.  In brief, the narrative runs something like this:

* I begin my RPG'ing career as what would now be called an "old-school" gamer.  I never play (and  to this day have never played) with the LBBs, but get caught up in the hobby in my teenage years with the 1979 Holmes box set and AD&D.  I get out of playing AD&D in the late 80's right around the time 2e is released.  I actually have never played 2e.  I have absolutely nothing against it, having never played it, but suffice to say that my baseline for understanding what D&D is (or "should" feel like for me) is based upon Holmes and 1e AD&D, i.e., skills do not exist in the game. 

*  After many years of playing other RPG systems including a completely homebrewed one, I return to playing D&D a few years ago, in the mid-2000s; the group I join is playing D&D 3.5, soon to become Pathfinder.  I tolerate 3.5 and it is great to be role-playing again, but I never feel "at home" in the system (more on this in a moment).

*  D&D IV is released, and my 3.5 group, after sticking with Pathfinder for a couple more months, switches to 4.0.  I fucking hate it.  I leave that group and begin to lay groundwork for my own campaign using Labyrinth Lord.    

As this mini-narrative makes clear, I am no great fan of 3.5 or 4e for me personally, but let me state at the outset that I am NOT interested in instigating or perpetuating any kind of "Edition Wars."  Ultimately this hobby is about having fun, and I am genuinely happy for those players (including my beloved ex-gaming group -- and I mean that "beloved" earnestly, they were a great group of players) who are getting a kick out of Pathfinder and D&D IV. 

What I want to address, however, is the fact that form matters.  That is, it is not simply enough to have a good group of players or an awesome DM -- though those things obviously matter a lot.  Yet the particular rules systems we choose to play with are every bit as important as the genre, setting, dice, and, yes, group chemistry in determining whether or not a given RPG'ing experience is fun.

Perhaps I am a bit of an extremist here, but if so, it is how I am "hardwired" and I can't seem to do much about it.  The truth is, even though I loved that 3.5 group, and was able to stomach playing in it for a couple years DESPITE my aversions to what felt like unnecessarily cumbersome rules, I NEVER LIKED THE 3.5 RULES, and that aspect of the experience, while not a deal-breaker, did somewhat diminish the fun for me.  What I ended up doing was ignoring / refusing to acknowledge the rules that seemed pointless (i.e., almost everything to do with skills and feats) and charging on ahead as if they didn't matter.  This mostly worked out, but there were many times when I simply wanted to be able to DO something, and would be reminded by other players that I had to roll against some feat or other, or that I couldn't do that thing (or at least hope to do it successfully) because I had no applicable skill.  This was frustrating.  And my general aversion to the 3.5 rules made me always feel like I was trying to move around underwater, that is, there was this big wall of rules that was making things happen sluggishly, in slow motion, again, diminishing the pacing and the fun (for me).

The less said about 4e the better, but my main point is that while I am sure that some DMs do an awesome job of making 4e feel more "old-school" than the (highly tactical and combat-oriented) style of play it seems to encourage, the form still matters -- i.e., different rules sets make different styles of play easier or harder to achieve.  The two evenings I played 4e -- albeit, possibly not with the world's greatest DM -- I was utterly bored.  Part of that may have been the way that DM used 4e as a vehicle, but part of the blame indeed lies with the vehicle itself.  I found little in the assumptions of 4e that excited my imagination or made me want to play it.  On the other hand, when I crack open the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion, or leaf through the booklets in the Swords and Wizardry White Box, I drool.  The rules themselves suggest possibilities get my mind going, get me jazzed to play the game. 

I think one of the points of confusion that leads to "Edition Wars" is the tendency to conflate the form and structure of the rules themselves with the corporation that produced them.  A great many of the anti-4e posts I have read (with some vicarious glee I admit) end up boiling down (at least in part) to a condemnation of WotC, Hasbro, or some combination thereof.  And while I confess myself to be a fan of fringe art, a supporter of grassroots creativity, and open to the idea of "sticking it to the man" etc., I truly have nothing against those companies per se.  Hell, like James M., I am immensely grateful to WotC for giving D&D a shot in the arm and especially for the innovation of the OGL that made Labyrinth Lord et. al. possible.  If Hasbro put out a game or rules system I liked, I would buy and play it, just as I would refrain from buying or playing a shitty or mediocre product that happened to be released by an OSR publisher I love.

So this may ultimately boil down to taste, but my point is that the rules really do matter -- they certainly matter more than corporate politics, and they may even matter more (or at least exert a profound influence upon) all the wonderful, ineffable stuff that contributes to the "feel" of a campaign: house rulings, campaign setting, player inclinations, party makeup, etc.  The rules provide the container for all that great, creative, spontaneous stuff -- they are the form that shapes the substance of our campaigns and our gaming experiences. 

This is why I am a "rules-light" OSR loyalist, and will happily leave 4e and Pathfinder to other types of gamers.

Manual of the Planes - 1e and 4e

My friend Carl, who is loyal to the Old Ways but nevertheless has more interest in D&D 4e than I have been able to muster, has been raving to me lately about one specific 4e publication, the Manual of the Planes.  Carl knows I am quite interested in gates and weird extraplanar travel, although I myself have never owned nor even used a reference book of any kind for my extraplanar adventures.  I have never felt a need to explain or justify how or why the planes work, nor have I ever felt the need to catalogue, categorize, or otherwise elucidate the "facts" about the extant planes in my campaigns.  In fact, I deliberately leave that stuff pretty damn open-ended and nebulous, since the average PC knows shit-all about other planes, and even those rare individuals who investigate or engage in planar travel do not widely share their hard-earned knowledge with the public.  In short, in my campaigns, visiting other planes is rare and requires the help of a specialist who knows what he/she/it is doing.  Thus precious little "common knowledge" about other planes or how to reach them exists.

I should also add that when I say "other planes," I do not even mean those listed in official AD&D publications like the Player's Handbook.  I never had much use for that crap.  I enjoyed reading about the planes as AD&D presented them, and there were certain specific ones, notably the Abyss, that I always liked and imagined existed in my own campaign-world.  But I could never make heads nor tails of those damn diagrams on p. 121 of the PH, so as far as official TSR publications went, my favored source text for what adventures on other planes could be like was Module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits (which is probably why I liked the Abyss).  In fact, Q1 aside, my concept of the planes was and is probably much more heavily influenced by Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber novels, which again leaves a great deal up to the interpretation of the individual planar traveler.  Sure, there are a few "stable" locations out there -- in Zelazny's case, Amber, the Courts of Chaos, Avalon, 20th-century Earth -- but a lot of what happens beyond one's home dimension (what AD&D calls the "Prime Material Plane," a term I don't have much truck with either) is unclear and in fact changes each time one travels through shadow / to and from other planes.

That said, I have been enjoying reading lots of RPG books lately, and in fact was in a local comics shop a couple of months ago and came across Jeff Grubb's 1e Manual of the Planes for the low low price of $6 (you can see the price sticker still on the cover in the scanned picture above).  I just couldn't turn that deal down, though the book itself has been sitting on my shelf unread until quite recently.

Back to Carl: at our most recent weekly Labyrinth Lord session, he brought over and temporarily lent me the new 4e Manual of the Planes.  He especially urged me to read the sections on the "Feywild" and the "Shadowfell," of course ignoring the 4e "crunch" and focusing on the descriptive passages.  I trust Carl's instincts so depsite my distaste for 4e and WotC products in general, I leafed through the introductory sections and the two bits that Carl wanted me to.  And not only did that initial taste inspire me to read further -- at least up to the part about the City of Brass -- it also spurred me to finally pick up Grubb's original and give it a quasi-serious reading.  What follows are my random comments about the two books, NOT intended as any kind of comprehensive review of either, but just my mental ramblings, mostly a list of stuff I liked or found useful in each text, with a few complaints and grumblings peppered in for good measure.

Please note at the outset that I am extremely biased against 4e -- I really don't like anything about it.  I do like some of what I found in the 4e Manual of the Planes, but no doubt my negative feelings about that "bland, over powered, perfectly balanced" system (Katallos) will no doubt creep into my comments here.

Let's start with the earlier 1e text.  As Jeff Grubb writes in the book's Foreward: 

One of the basic assumptions of this tome is is that what has been written in the past is true, and it is our job to explain it. The chief reason is that the AD&D system is a living and dynamic system that is built upon the foundation of its past.  While the game can absorb any amount of new material, casting off pre-existing material often damages the system. 

Of course, this type of traditionalist rhetoric (written in 1986) warms the heart of an old D&D grognard like myself.  Highlights include a succinct discussion of travel in and through the ethereal plane (pp. 11-14), the brilliant description of the River Styx as flowing between multiple lower planes including the Nine Hells, Hades, and the Abyss (p. 83), and of course the descriptive sections on two of my favorite "classic" AD&D planes, the Abyss (p. 101) and the Nine Hells (p. 109).   Despite the book's valiant efforts to explain and contextualize the maps originally found in Appendix IV of the Player's Handbook, I still don't have much use for the maps of the planes included in the Manual of the Planes (pp. 6-7, 52, 74).  I guess for me, alternate planes should retain near-complete mysteriousness as to their "whereabouts" and obviously do not follow typical rules of spatiality or geography anyway.  Thus, the very idea of trying to map at all them seems counterproductive to me. 

That said, some of my favorite aspects of the Dungeons and Dragons IV version of the Manual of the Planes (by Richard Baker et. al.) included a couple of its maps, especially the main map found on p. 11 and the map of the City of Brass on p. 75.  I don't know how practical these maps really are, but they are sure as hell evocative.  Of course, this in part has to do with the overall high production values of this book -- an aspect of game design WotC has always done well.  The maps are glossy with great colors, and are great fun to look at.  Of course, as I've said,  don't really believe in mapping the planes anyway. . .  and I am still not sure why the Nine Hells and the Abyss are in totally separate places -- the former in the Astral Sea, the latter in the Elemental Chaos-- in this new iteration.  I mean, factually I know it has to do with D&D IV's classification of Demons as Elementals, but I have no truck with that bullcrap and when I see this map that particular aspect of it strikes me as wrong -- it evokes for me James Maliszewski's repeated comment that D&D IV is "rootless."  But on the other side of the coin, I am particularly thrilled to see the famed City of Brass included in this book (p. 73) -- is this the first time that locale has been described in any detail in a D&D publication?  In any case, kudos to these folks for including it, for it is one of my favorite classic AD&D legendary places.    

The main difference between these two books (and the respective editions of the game they belong to) is that one (the 1e tome) is invested in elucidating and expanding what came before it in the PH and certain modules, the other (4e) is invested in consolidating and streamlining the whole "other planes" concept, without much structural reference to the past.  To be fair, I was pleased to see that the IV version includes a one-page summary of the planes as they appeared in "earlier editions of the game," for some reason dubbed here "The Great Wheel" (p. 15).  But generally, the newer tome picks and chooses what it takes from the earlier editions, instead positing its own wholly new organizational scheme and many new planes and planar locales.  From this point of view, the earlier Manual might be called an "esoteric" elucidation of the planes, and the IV version the "streamlined" version.

One of the best overall concepts found in the D&D IV Manual of the Planes is the Astral Sea -- this is a great extraplanar locale and a very rich idea as presented here.  I REALLY like the general concept of "parallel planes" for I have long felt (probably borrowing again from Zelazny's Amber) that some planes must lie "closer" together than others, and I particularly like the "Feywild" concept and will borrow something similar for the Lands of Ara.  However, I must take umbrage at these ridiculously pedestrian and obvious-sounding names: "Feywild"? "Shadowfell"?  A dark city called "Gloomwrought"?  WTF?  The concepts aren't bad -- and the Gloomwrought map (p. 58) is quite inspiring -- but please save me from these stupid-sounding place names!

As James M. has written in a review of Goodman Games' Points of Light:

It's an old school product with new school production values.  [. . .]  All in all, the presentation of Points of Light should serve as a model for how old school publishers present their own products. 

This is one of the best things I can say about the D&D IV Manual of the Planes: its overall production values are superb -- this is probably half the reason why I find its maps so compelling.  But Carl was also right: I have found a few concepts -- the Feywild, the Astral Sea, an underground city that looks like Gloomwrought but is named something else -- worthy of my attention here, and I am glad he lent me the book.  I would probably even consider buying one myself, once I can get over the bitter taste of giving WotC my money.

4E is a distraction for the board game night, not something to run campaigns with

In a great review of the 4e Player's Handbook NiTessine comments that:

"4E is a distraction for the board game night, not something to run campaigns with."

to which Marcus adds:

"I have no wish to foul my hands or my hobby with this filth."