I don’t have much to add to the 4E DS development, but I thought I would point the way to a blog with some very smart and regular thoughts and examinations of 4E: Rob Donoghue has been posting a lot of good stuff about how 4E works, how it is supposed to work and so forth. His most recent post is about the wizard class, and it’s good stuff. Might come in helpful to those designing for 4E DS.

In addition to Rob’s journal, you might also want to check out the journal of Keith Senkowski, as he has been posting some relevant and thoughtful 4E design considerations lately.

Interesetingly, it appears that Rob doesn’t live that far from me …

Squaremans has an interesting post on the feel of 4E and 4E adventures, and the differences between it and previous editions in that regard, that might be worth looking into if Athas.org has plans to develop any 4E modules in the future. Plus it’s just an interesting read.

Thanks for that link grey … very interesting reading. Helps clarify some of the things that have been muddling ‘round in my head.

The guy offers an entertaining read, thanks for sharing the find Rev.
His blog article indicates he thinks that the dungeony feeling emanating from all things D&D now might give off the wrong impression as to what can be done with the edition’s new capabilities, or simply that people have the limited impression that only one thing can be done with the new edition, i.e. dungeon crawls. Like for any other edition, adventures can be emotionaly challenging, full of dilemas, or they can be hack n slash dungeon crawls.
What WotC is offering now with its line of adventures (3 modules per tier, total of 9 adventures) is dungeon crawls.
It would seem it’s up to the DM to craft the other kind of adventures. For now.

The most important thing in Role Playing is to remember that the players and the GM work together to create a fun and interesting game. Some groups really have a lot of fun with the dungeon crawl and the challenge of life and death, a sort of virtual gambling that pits skill and imagination against the fate of the dice. There are also a great many other (and in some opinions) better ways to play games. The part of this rant that is relevant to 4E is that the system of a game is REQUIRED for a dungeon crawl in such a way that the quality of the system is directly related to the quality of the hack and slash game. The other aspects of Role Playing Games are often much less attached to the details of the system, up to and including the almost strictly RP social interaction type games many of which don’t even try to use the system mechanics for anything other than character inspiration and a general guideline to character capability and stylistic options.
The main complaint I have heard about 4E is that it does not promote RP, which is insane, no good system does, and the few systems that force RP such that the system mechanics themselves are so useless as to be an unacceptable option are the worst game systems on the market by far and away. To suggest that it is the responsibility of a book (or even list of books) to tell us how to be good gamers, or to teach us how to play the role of a character we have created in a game is simply foolishness and not worth considering during any discussion of one system vs another.

Glad you guys found it useful! And, yeah, Penn, I pointed it out because I thought: Athas isn’t a setting much given to dungeon-crawls, but to brutal survivalist scenarios and painful heroism, so can we (athas.org) make those adventures?
Hendell, what games specifically are you ranting talking about being “the worst games on the market” and/or forcing RP down players’ throats? (And could you explain what you mean specifically by the term “role-playing”? I ask since it has become a term that means many different things to different people.)
Because I’m not sure quite what you’re going on about in the above or how it relates to the blog entry I’d linked to. (And as to the assertion that a book about playing the game should teach you how to play that game well being foolish? Er…what?)

There are a few games that come to mind with systems intentionally designed to be unable to create a result consistent with the flavor text of the setting, the story as described in the books, or with logic at all. The worst of them is the Old World of Darkness system that was designed to be so unwieldy that the players were better off simply using RP to solve most problems, talking to the NPCs rather than shooting them, creating interestingly convoluted situations where systems didn’t need to be involved to know if the guy who pulls the ‘quick release’ out from under the refrigerator hanging from the rafters was going to get hit by it.
My definition of Role Play is to take on the role of the character, create for it a personality all its own, and to begin to think more like the character than like yourself. While the responsibility of the book and system mechanics is to ensure that when random probability and character skill instead of player skill becomes the important part of the situation, the world still makes sense.
I do not intend to say that all attempts to teach the art of playing a character’s role in text or in a book are foolish, but instead for us as players to leave that responsibility in teaching newer gamers to the book alone is foolishness. The biggest problem with the 3.0 3.5 D20 system books is they talk just enough about what it means to play an RPG that people think they can do it all on there own, when in fact without a mentor of some kind most players are better off learning to perfect there chess game.
I have found a great number of 4E detractors that feel the game has removed all possibility for role playing and is instead a battle game only, when in fact I feel no such compulsion to drop the personality of a character simply because the system mechanics work so well with or without any real character behind them. To say that this is a failing of the system to me sounds like an over simplification of what is really an inappropriate fear of change in what should always be a dynamically evolving hobby.

Thanks for the clarifications! No argument here. (Though my definition of “role-play” is different, because I’m not into character immersion, the one above is one of the more common definitions of the activity.)

My feeling of 4th edition are not based on Character Development or the like.. its in the monsters and NPC’s (I’m not an expert as of yet) but I find it really hard to adopt monsters to different levels of play. which frustrates me and makes me feel like the game is based around combat. then again I hate the way “Skill challenges” are handled in all of the games so far that I have played 12 successes is near impossible and people just run out of ideas and it ends up people saying “I try history” which makes every role player cringe. ohh and a skill challenge for picking a lock or disarming a trap in combat now that is annoying as the rogue (or skilled character) is then taken out of the combat for way too long.

That is quite the opposite of my opinion on skill challenges, I will grant that D&D is a touch of a combat focused setting (particularly Dark Sun) and that 4E is a VERY combat focused system, but the last few skill challenges I can remember the party getting into were so easily solved that I think 12 successes is a very moderate plan, and under no circumstances would I presume that the Imagination of the players is the limiting factor, that is usually the part that goes overboard and gets them into trouble.
As to the monsters attributes, I tend to agree each stat block is designed very carefully to the point that just ‘adding’ a few points here and there will NOT effectively change its level. Instead I suggest finding a monster of the correct level and changing its name. You want a bigger badder ORC? use an OGRE (not on Athas). You want a Beast head Giant to be stronger than a hill giant, use a stone giant’s stats. If you want a Mekalot to be bigger than an elephant use a Bullet, just don’t tell the players the name and stats don’t match.

I like that way of making Monsters Hendell you have inspired me for all of my 4th edition games now…..