Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Preview
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The first thing to note is that the physical products have received a makeover. The game will still be predicated on three core rulebooks, but there's a new logo, and tweaked art style, and magic items will be moving over to the Player's Handbook (instead of the Dungeon Master's Guide, where they have traditionally resided). That leaves more room in the Dungeon Master's Guide to provide more advice and tools for building adventures, although, as ever, the game will also be supported with pre-prepared adventure modules. These, though, will be graced with new serial numbers: H, standing for Heroic (saving village); P for Paragon (saving the kingdom); and E for Epic (saving the world).
Combined with a new character level cap (30, as opposed to 20 in previous versions of the game), these new demarcations reveal one aspect of the way the rules will be changing. They are an attempt to address the 'sweetspot' that has arguably existed at character levels between around 5 or 6 and 12 or 13, that made adventuring at those character levels much more fun than lower or higher levels. "The mechanics are designed to scale more consistently in 4th Edition," says Ryan. "The goal - and I think they've succeeded - is to make a game where there really isn't any difference in how much you're going to enjoy a first-level play versus a 30th-level play. They're going to feel different because they're about different things, but there's no sweetspot."
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The biggest change over previous editions, and the one that takes it closest to the orbit of videogaming in its own right, is the fact that it will be going online. At the heart of this transition will be Dungeons & Dragons Insider, or D&DI - a subscription service that will provide players with a suite of tools that will enable them to set up faster, and play more easily, and over the internet. Not all of the tools will require this fee: some will be entirely free; some will be partially free; and some can be shared among players by using 'guest passes'. Pricing is USD 15 a month (or USD 10 a month for a year), though UK pricing is not yet announced. And while various third-party applications have allowed pen-and-paper RPGs to be played online for a while now, this is the real deal.
There's a character generator, a character visualiser, various ways to track your character's progression, ways for DMs to build encounters, a digital gaming table, a database of rules, Dungeon/Dragon magazines, and organised/tournament play. The character manager will allow you to create your character (using house rules if necessary, but tagging this for other players to see), print character sheets and save them online. The character visualiser is similar to those that you'll have seen in various MMOs but much more detailed. It can produce images that can be exported to a character sheet, or as a JPEG, or to the online game table as a digital miniature. As for the online game table, it provides DMs with dungeon tiles and digital miniatures, but they can also draw their own maps, import images, and even implement a fog of war effect.
