Expectation, Surprise and Disappointment

Anticipating a New Edition

As anyone who reads this blog is probably tired of hearing, I have been enjoying this wonderful hobby of ours for over four decades now and during that time I have seen a few games come and go - at least in-print and out-of-print. 

The good folks at Wiz Bros announced this week that the World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game will be getting a new treatment in 2024 just in time for a much anticipated anniversary party. News which brings to my mind a number of previous occasions where I found myself looking forward to what the next iteration of my favorite FRP game would be like? 

Wondering: How would it be different? 

What would be improved? 

Would there be things left out of the new edition?

What would it look like?

So many other questions. 

Like many, I look forward to what is "yet to come", and I can't help but speculate about what might or probably will change in the new material. Once the much anticipated product arrives, I will no doubt be among those rushing to purchase and see what it all amounts to.

Many of us have been down this road before. Most of us can look back on some earlier release and recall things that we love and things that we are/were less than happy about finding in those "new" versions. 

For whatever reason, I find myself returning this week to 2008 and the release of the fourth edition volumes. My first memory of this sometimes "controversial" edition is that I really enjoyed reading the text introducing a fresh new approach to an old subject. I recall how useful I believed the defender, striker and controller ways of defining character class roles could be. The "powers" concept - daily, encounter and at-will - was a fresh new way of looking at the actions that your character could take during your turn. And I must admit, I was really excited about playing my first fire-breathing dragonborn character.

The new fun was not limited to just player characters in 2008. The 4e MM I welcomed as referee/DM and found full of surprises, some of which still delight me, and some of which have become part of the way I run the game - any game - to this day. Scaling monsters, that is making bigger, more deadly versions of any monster, (orcs and goblins are good examples) was a widely practiced theme in this edition allowing creatures to stay useful at higher levels of play and incidentally making the game more consistent with some popular fictional sources in which some orcs are way more deadly than others! Boss monsters in 4e are frequently attended by a number of "minions" - creatures with a single hit point who are good at "spreading the love" and controlling the battle grid. Players will find such "minions" in most games that I have run since 2008.

The 4e DMG is full of advice and for my money is one of the best of this kind of book for explaining how to set-up and run a game at your table. I rank this volume (together with the AD&D 1e DMG) as an essential resource for anyone occupying the post "behind the referee screen".

Unlike some, I do not have disdain for 4e. I enjoyed playing the game regularly for a number of years and give it credit for the part it played in the rise of the "old school" gaming scene. And to top it all off, I really loved (still do) those awesome 4e Wayne Reynolds illustrations!