So if you don’t like 4e, you’re an Asshat, hm?

It’s great that you think 4e ROXXORZ!1!, but no need to get your knickers in a twist and get insulting because there are those of us who dislike the Paradigm Shift from ‘the original fantasy RPG’ to CCG/MMO/BG for the ‘Kewl Powerz’ set or whatever paradigm WotC have shifted the brand over to now.

The whole point made in this blog entry is not whether the game is ‘better/worse’ than’ or ‘more/less difficult’ or even ‘fun/not fun.’

The point made is that it is not a game that depends heavily on verisimiltude and role-play, but rather a game that depends on being ‘balanced to the Nth Degree’ and havign lots of minitures to move around. One example of this design philosophy: most of the ‘powers’ make no sense in a role-playing environment and seem to exist solely to facilitate moving minatures about in a neat way.

Not only that but the powers are all pretty much the same in everything but name and the classes have all been blanded out in the name of ‘making everyone as equal as possible in combat.’ It’s like the RPG version of communism.

I accept the fact that others might find this fun. I don’t and niether do many others. Enough ‘others,’ in fact, to make me wonder if WotC might have misunderstood the ramifications of trying to draw in people who would rather sit and just play a MMO, let the computer do all the hard work and just get down to the business of whacking things and going on ‘runs’ into ‘quest areas,’ while alienating the older players who make up the lions share of their niche market.

I played 3e until I saw the direction it was going and 3.5 pretty much hung it up for me. I thought I’d get into 4e, but then I read the books and said, ‘This isn’t D&D to me, this is a bloody videogame that makes me do all the work.’

No thanks, I’ll stick to WFRP and C&C. If I want to play a minatures game, I’ll stick to WFB or any number of boardgames in my closet and if I want to be part of the vidiot generation, I’ll start a WoW account, but there’s no way I’m spending $100 on psuedo-D&D…