I would
like to begin this review of D&D’s fifth edition with a short primer on
price. As I sit here, my other RPG books
around me, I look to four examples of prices I have willingly paid for the
ability to have the core books. Of
these, I found my AD&D core books in a used book store for very cheap,
something like forty dollars in total for the three, but looking at the prices
on the back by the ISBN, back in the day they would have cost a total of
ninety. My 3.5 books? About the same price. When fourth edition came out I decided to get
the three which came with the large book sleeve to put them in. That was one hundred and five dollars. Finally, Pathfinder, which I also got used,
the real price being ninety dollars.
I see a
theme here: pay approximately ninety dollars for your three or so core books,
and you’re good to go- never have to buy a book again!
Then
tell me, O Wizards of Emptying Wallets, why the new core books cost a
collective, shocking one hundred and fifty dollars?! I have not seen a person bring up the bloody
price point as regards this alleged “return to form” of D&D. In every other case I have found the purchase
of RPG books to hold far more value and replayability than any other form of
entertainment, especially videogames.
I
question here. I hear “modular” thrown
about as regards this game so much I have to expect them to release books on a
similarly insane schedule like they did for fourth edition to just give you
extra rules to play by, but only if you want to, I mean, you can just get rid
of every rule in the game; it’s D&D!
Moving
along with the “return to form” quip I keep hearing about, it will be
profitable to consider which kind of return they’re wanting. They naturally won’t want to continue on with
what they did for fourth edition, if only because sales suffered because they
made too many books for 3.5, so the question comes up: Which edition is being
returned to? From what I have read and
the words associated with this release, I can only conclude that it’s supposed
to be a return to AD&D.
My
understanding is that third edition was a powergaming nightmare, wrought by the
game being bought by Wizards of the Coast, and it being so pissed off all the
AD&D gamers who were used to there being more natural danger to the
adventuring business. Combine with this
radical changes, some of which were quite good, and the older player base was
lost. Kids who grew up with videogames
must have become their target audience then, but three scant years later they “patched”
third edition to be more palatable and serviceable.
If we
assume that they were trying to “bring back” AD&D while making the game
something new and appealing to a modern audience, we inherently find a
contradiction. These are two racially
different markets: the old players enjoyed the danger and challenge, while
gamers today enjoy power while not savoring the difficulty of a game much.
How do
I know this? Look at the game rules
regarding characters for each edition, starting with AD&D. Then, look to 3.5- characters are much
stronger by comparison. Proficiencies
are gone, replaced with “You are good with all X weapons and armors Y and Z.” Wizards and other arcane casters gained more
spells, the ability to scribe scrolls for the former, and generally became much
stronger. Pathfinder does much the same
thing, although the monsters strike me as being good enough to still provide a
challenge. Fourth edition gave everyone
ridiculous amounts of power, ranging from the at-wills, encounter, and daily
powers. I’m expecting this trend to
actually continue once I start looking at the character classes.
For
brevity’s sake I will end here for now.
To simply recap, the game is damned expensive, especially in today’s
money, there’s an inherent contradiction in saying this game is somehow
new-yet-old-school, and currently my expectation is for the characters to have
too much power early on, just like in the previous edition.
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