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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

WNW: Balthazar

Balthazar (yes, THE Balthazar) shares his opinion of the upcoming 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons.



Nothing more need be said, really.

9 comments:

  1. At least he did that better than Wil Wheaton would have (though I would have liked seeing Chevy Chase give it a try). I think it landed on the safe side of funny.

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  2. The same, drunken Balthazar that WON at D&D?  Great stuff!

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  3. Okay, I know this video is mostly for the sake of comedy, but why does everybody gotta pick on 4e? I like 4e, it's the first RPG I've ever played. The comparison to WoW doesn't really stick, it's not like the DM is going to have your first quest be to kill 10 wolves out in the forest for some copper and a crappy pair of boots.

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  4. Speaking only for myself and not for everyone else....

    All previous editions of D&D built upon themselves and were compatible with various degrees of difficulty. It was easy enough to upgrade characters between editions, and the style of play was more or less the same. This went on from 1974 until 2008. 

    With 4th Edition, Wizards of the Coast (perhaps working under dictates from Hasbro) basically said, "Screw that noise. World of Warcraft is the hot thing right now! We need to make a game just like that."  And so WotC made a game that was emphatically NOT compatible, with radically different play style. 

    Many fans felt like we were being thrown under the bus. That WotC continued to make dick moves, such as: continual PR fumbles; yanking all PDFs from online stores; and inserting the "poison pill" clause into the Gaming Standard License. These actions continued to reinforce our belief that we were being told to get out of the way and make room for a new generation of players. 

    Fast-forward to today. Pathfinder is raking in boatloads of cash and is, last I checked, the #1-selling RPG. D&D, on the other hand, is on a new revision after only 4 years -- compared to the decade-long (give or take a year) reign of previous generations. 

    Basically, my beef isn't with the game. It's a perfectly serviceable miniatures game. But it *isn't* D&D any more, it's a tactical wargame with D&D frosting. Fortunately, Pathfinder is exactly what we wanted. 

    It's a pity that 4e didn't turn out to be what WotC wanted after all. 

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  5. A couple of observations:

    1. I like him. [grin]

    2. Where did you think Microsquish got the idea for "versions"?

    "Plastics."

    "Versions."

    "Steroids."

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  6. Could I order a side of comprehension & relevance?

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  7. MS makes a bundle selling new versions of software that aren't much of an improvement over the old; an old tradition in gaming systems. There's an old joke about the future being in "versions" which references The Graduate ("the future is plastics"). "Steroids" refers to a Repairman Jack variant joke on the theme.

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