Postby Kaffis » Tue Sep 29, 2009 12:55 am
4th Edition is as D&D as your DM chooses to make it. If your DM pays only lip service to whatever your preferred setting is, then yes, it's D&D in name only.
It doesn't have a lot of guidelines for roleplaying, but do you really *want* rules for roleplaying? I don't. The focus of the rules is on dungeon crawling, and that's just fine and dandy with me -- D&D started out as essentially a stripped-down in scale tactical wargame with fantasy trappings anyways.
And that's what 4th Edition is. The powers place a lot of emphasis on movement and creating tactically interesting situations with a bit of cinematic description in the flavor text for each power. How your DM leverages this is likely to seriously color your perception of the game. The roles concept it introduces hearkens back to the emphasis on group synergy the original D&D classes promoted (you know, back when it was "mage, elf, fighter," etc.), which I like.
People who look at the powers and roles and say "It's an MMO!" are really missing the point, I think. Powers are no different from wizard spells in their degree of MMOness, and I really welcomed them as a way to spread out the resource budgetting and ability to do "cool stuff" among classes other than spellcasters. For somebody who plays a fighter, it's really a breath of fresh air compared to their 3rd edition strategy of "I stand in front of the big monster and full attack." Letting fighters et al. make interesting decisions in combat is a good thing. And roles feeling like MMO fare is merely a symptom of MMOs stealing it from P&P RPGs to begin with.
Phoenix -- since you mentioned 40k, I play a Sisters of Battle army I'm still working on painting, and I'm starting up a White Scars-esque Bike themed Space Marine army, too.
