Neverwinter Interview
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RPS: I haven't played 4th Edition myself, but quite a few people have observed that it seems to reflect MMO mechanics in some ways. Is that your experience of it?
Emmert: To a degree. The similarities start with the fact that MMOs adopted RPG mechanics, which were adopted from D&D, which were frankly adopted from wargame miniatures. MMO development had a baseline understanding of D&D, but the difference is that they are programmed. Programmers had to sit down and systematise how each of these character classes would work in their game. They made them follow set rules so that when they were implementing the skills of a fighter, as opposed to a magic user, I would be able to use variations of the same code for both. This means there was a certain similarity in how the rules were executed. In 4th Edition D&D Wizards took the morass of special rules and one-off exceptions that were part of the various character classes, something that was rife in first and second edition variations of the game, and systematised them. Both MMOs and 4th Edition have systematised the character classes and the mechanics, and so there's no huge surprise that they ended up in a similar place. Of course there are also people at Wizards who played MMOs, and this would likely have influenced their thinking. I think 4th Edition is both more accessible for more people, and more tactile. It's very much about using miniatures, using placement, about your environment, about seeing your character in a room. It's a 3D environment, and that's what a videogame is too. It translates right across from one to the other.
RPS: So we're heading for a kind of perfect D&D by working at it across paper and digital formats?
Emmert: I wouldn't say perfect, I would say. it depends on the goal of the game. When the goals of an MMORPG and the goals of a pen and paper RPG are the same, then you are going to end up with similar results. So no, not perfect, it depends on what you want to do with it.
