My gaming history (Or how I stopped worrying, and learnt to love D&D Next)

I’ve been a gamer for a long time, though, lets me honest, that doesn’t always equate to being a good roleplayer or GM. In fact, after 20 years of rolling dice, I still get terrified before going to any public play event, I’m scared that there will be amazing roleplayers there and my efforts will be poor in comparison.

The Early Days (Basic D&D/2e)

I started gaming in the days of BECMI, with a basic D&D box set, then the Rules Cyclopedia (easily the best product TSR ever did), and then countless Mystara gazetteers, 2E ‘complete’ books, and various other stuff, from 1E or 2E that my FLGS had in its bargain buckets.

I ran games for my brother who got me into gaming, I ran games for my school friends… And they were, in hindsight, a hideous melting pot of setting, FR’s Mythdranor resituated onto the Red Steel coastline, with the players finding Mimir skulls deep within the ruins of citadels swamped by a shifting sea of sand… But they were wonderful days. I felt like I could add or drop rules as I wanted, and while we might sketch a map and use coins and dice to show positions, I felt it was fine to have 3 adventurers and 16 goblins in a 2×2 room… If the fighter wanted to run through a wall of flame and swing his sword wildly to hit 3 orcs, well, by golly, he could. If the dwarf wanted to cast spells, then he could carve a rune to do so. Would any of it be considered rules legal nowadays? Nope, but it was still D&D! We played this game for a decade, with occasional forays into other systems like Vampire, or SLA Indsutries or Chill. But we always came back to D&D.

3rd Edition

I missed much of the fuss about the move to d20/OGL as it was called at the time. I remember vaguely being impressed by the preview art, and the dropping of THAC0, but a combination of moving, marriage, business trips, 9/11, parenting, and divorce meant that year of run up to 3E whizzed past in a blur.

I didn’t play much 3E, and what I did play didn’t impress me at the time. It felt like too much of a departure from the D&D I had made with my friends. Fighters suddenly had to take feats to do the things that as a group we just let happen by the players description, monster stats (though lets be honest, everything) became more complex. On the flipside, I picked up Spycraft and was impressed that D&D could be turned into a spy game.

Again, I missed a lot of the fuss over 3.5, mainly because I didn’t buy into 3E, and mainly because its changes came to me via d20 Modern. d20 Modern was stylish, it was different, it had great concepts, and, in my experience, was completely unplayable…

4th Edition

By the time 4e was announced, I had moved away from roleplaying. I’d spent most of the middle part of the noughties in a deep depression, writing progressively more horrible stuff for SLA Industries and my own near-future cyberpunk game. I’d met someone new and gamed with my friends but it hadn’t really taken over my life as it had when I was a teen. So 4E was a negligible blip.

Until the day it hit torrents…

I downloaded it, I read it, I printed it… I was shocked. It wasn’t the d&D of my childhood, it wasn’t the D&D I’d played last, but instead was something new, something different and interesting. I could see the obvious nods to previous editions, I could see what they were trying to achieve with digital tools and power cards. And then I played it.

It was fun…

My experience of 3E was minimal, but my feeling was always that the fun, doing what you want in a gritty, or cinematic or stupid way had gone out of the game. 4E let my best mate play a walking tank that breathed fire and hit things with a big sword, so we played it. Admittedly not as much as I’d have liked and in the early days, the flaws were obvious, while the lack of digital tools were less of an issue due to limited options, they were a constant reminder of broken promises.

I didn’t really love 4E, but I bought into it, picking up book after book, and spending way too much on minis. I enjoyed it because it was modern, it was easy to prep for, easy to run, and had the advantage of a grid and minis which meant my second wife, who had no gaming experience could get involved and know what an orc was or why a marauding drake was something to fear.

Loving 4E

I didn’t love 4e… Until Monster Manual 2 gamesday…

I’d taken my son with me to my FLGS, hoping to play, but when I got there, there was no DM. Hell, the shop had scheduled it, knowing they didn’t have a DM, so I offered to run it. Like I say, 4E is easy to prep for, its also easy to run on the fly when you’ve had 20 minutes to read the module, and setup the minis provided. I ran the game for some people in a similar boat to me, coming from the previous editions, with some 4E gaming, but the system was a bit ‘meh’. They too, had brought a kid with them, so we sat down, went over the PHB2 characters in the box, and started playing.

Over the course of that day, I figured out why 4E worked, why it was FUN… The kid was playing a goliath barbarian, and couldn’t stop rolling 20′s… we watched on as this kid with no experience of RPG’s got more and more into the role, as he described how the orcs blood he spilled dripped down his craggy rock like body and spurred him to run at the next foe…  And I realised that 4E’s appeal was in a shared ruleset, that somewhere else in the world, another kid was having the same experience, with a GM who could pick up the adventure and run it with zero prep.

I started up a public play group that day, and ran it for 2 years before issues with how the store supported me drove me to quit. Luckily, I formed some great friendships and those people continue that group, bringing new gamers in, and helping old gamers return, not just via 4E, but by a wide range of games across all genres.

Sure, 4E was not without flaws. The early material feels poor in comparison, there was a distinct lack of fluff until recently, there were the broken promises on digital tools, the poorly handled move to web tools, the constant errata, the debacle over how essentials was presented to the community… But I stayed with it, and I still love the game. It does a lot of things really well, it’s easy to teach, it’s easy to prep for, and with the right group, ROLEPLAY, rather than roll-play is not only possible, but thanks to the customizable characters, makes sense and is reinforced in play.

D&D Next

So that brings me to D&D Next/5E. I’m sceptical. Mainly because 4E works so well for me that I’m not convinced a new edition is needed, but I can understand how 4E doesn’t work for others, and how WotC are thusly losing gamers to OSRIC and Pathfinder. I greeted the first article on the New York Times with suspicion/hand waving , the whole, ‘its believed that WotC will…’ but then, Mike Mearls confirmed it.

My initial concerns are that it will be hard to make a system to appeal to all types of D&D gamer. Hell, I only have to look at my twitter stream to see 30 to 40 different opinions about what D&D Next needs to include to realise just how much work is involved.

Then theres the listening to the community/open playtest bit. I’m suspicious that it’s just something that has been said to placate the fanbase, and what they will be given to comment on will be only a tiny part of the game. I’m scared that only the vocal minority who rant and rave on the charop forums or in the comments will be listened to. But most of all, I’m scared that WotC will only run the playtests in America.

So I’m very wary of D&D next…

Or Am I?

Have a look at the main names in charge of D&D Next.

Monte Cook – he of Planescape, he of Ptolus, he of 3E in general, he of Labyrinth of Madness… Monte has said that I will be able to run Labyrinth of Madness in D&D Next, so I’ll believe him. Monte has been with D&D for ages, he’s got the background, the skills, the idea, the vision.

Rob Schwalb – the man is a walking freelance machine, he churns out consistently great articles for DDI, with great fluff and great crunch, and has been part of the recent turn around in 4E, improving the quality of the articles.

Mike Mearls – some people love him, some people hate him, but it takes guts to admit to the fans at Gencon that WotC and D&D had lost the way. In addition to this, Mike has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help the UK Tweetups I organise, providing a personal intro last year that touched on the relationships in the industry. Its thanks to Mike that I saw what WotC wanted Essentials to become. From my dealings with him, and his dealings with the community in general, I get the feeling that Mike is someone who deeply cares about D&D and the fans, and that he wants D&D Next to do the rich 40 year history of gaming justice.

Greg Bilsland – Greg gets things done. Pure and simple… I’ve been on the receiving end of the Mike/Greg combo when I built the 3d Lair Assault terrain last year, and they are an incredible team, that, from my side of the interaction, when things need to happen, those two make them happen.

I can only think of one other person I’d like to see in the D&D Next team, and thats Charles Ryan. He made the 4E community happen here in the UK, he went out of his way to interact with the fans, and has been sorely missed since his return to the States.

So am I negative about D&D Next? Nope, it’s in safe hands, and I’m confident that the team will do their best to make it a game that all D&D gamers will love.

Will I support 4e in the mean time… sure… I’m working on a Mind Warper theme for bards/illusionists already. 4E isn’t dead yet. And when it does die, I suspect D&D Next will let us loot it’s corpse for all the best bits…