I’ve been ravenously devouring every scrap of information I can get my hands on regarding 4th Edition. Wizards’ official site updates three times a week, which hardly seems like often enough. I have, however, managed to catch hold of some inspiring scraps, and I have some suppositions based on others. In no particular order:

• Paladins no longer have to be Lawful Good. It never made sense to me that only the good-aligned deities got divine champions. Wouldn’t a deity like the Mockery or Bane see the sense in having a living conduit of serious beat-down, and imbue someone thus? Now they can.
• I have a hunch that attacks of opportunity are being replaced by immediate actions, which allow you to react to certain stimuli in a variety of ways. I hope to see a number of feats and class abilities that grant you a great deal of flexibility in how you use your immediate actions and what triggers them. I have heard mention of rogues being able to wait for an opening and launch a counter-attack, a maneuver that was, mechanically, difficult to pull of in 3.x.
• Clerics can now heal while they do other things. Huzzah!
• The old, Vancian spell slot system of magic is (mostly) gone apparently, replaced by something that is presumably more balanced for an individual encounter rather than a full day. Also, you can have 25th-level spells (though I’m unclear as to why spell levels don’t go all the way up to 30, like class levels). Further, fighter/mage hybrid characters will apparently be far more viable at lower levels.
• Along those lines, the multiclassing system is evidently seeing a bit of a re-haul.
• Iterative attacks are, I believe, being eliminated or, at the very least, minimized in a Saga-esque way, which should speed up combat, particularly at higher levels.
• Fighters are weapon specialists now, and rogues are skill specialists. Fighters can do more with weapons than other classes can, and rogues can do more with skills.
• The designers are trying to design the classes such that everyone always has something interesting to do. By extension, this implies more options for the fighter (rather than merely, “I attack the orc.”) and less “Crap, I’m out of spells” for the wizard/cleric/sorcerer.

That’s all I can think of right now. The geeky part of my brain has been set a-tingling.

I’m sure most of you already know, but it was officially announced yesterday that 4th Edition D&D is indeed coming our way in mid-2008. I really, really couldn’t be more excited, particularly after reading this post on EN World.

The above post gives a number of tantalizing details, doesn’t it. Character classes go up to 30th level? Racial abilities beyond 1st level? Racial class powers? And what’s all this about new power sources and a change in resource management? I can only hope that they’re revamping spellcasting to make low-level casters more viable after their first fight of the day. All this, and it even says that a lot of the changes were tested in Star Wars Saga Edition and The Book of Nine Swords. Now, I can’t speak to Nine Swords since I haven’t read it yet, but you all know, I’m sure, how I feel about Saga Edition.

Like I said, I couldn’t be more excited. Unfortunately, the official site (previously 4venture) is currently down, probably due to the glut of curious and excited D&D fans rushing Wizards’ virtual doors in hopes of discovering some hitherto unknown tidbit of information. I guess I’ll have to wait to see it.

For those who have not already, go and look at this.

Back, are you? I believe that the popular theory is that this is a countdown clock to the announcement of Fourth Edition D&D, and that’s certainly what it looks like to me. Many people would add a lot of doom and gloom at this point: “It’s too soon!”, or “They’re obsoleting my material!” I won’t be doing that. I look at this with pure optimism and anticipation, for two main reasons.

First, while it’s only been a scant seven years since the release of 3E, I feel somewhat satiated with it. I maintain that the d20 System is a good one, particularly for what it was originally intended for: heroic fantasy. I enjoy playing with it, and I like D&D. But really, how many new rules do you need for 3E? I used to get really excited about the new crunch books, books like Song and Silence or Masters of the Wild. But since the advent of 3.5, I’ve felt that it’s largely been more of the same, a simple updating of material that I’d already seen. In fact, the only D&D supplements that I’ve really been interested in in recent years are those geared toward my favored campaign setting, Eberron.

The second reason is that I have seen Star Wars Saga Edition, it it is good. I can only hope that the changes wrought in that iteration of the d20 System presage those yet to be enacted in Fourth Edition, and if that is indeed the case, it will be something truly special. I hunger for a slimmed-down class list, with a single class that covers ranger, fighter, and barbarian, and another that covers wizard, sorcerer, and cleric alike. I dearly hope that they continue to use the Condition Track, being that it is a unified mechanic that simplifies 90% of the rules bloat in D&D.

At any rate, this is all purely conjecture. I hope that I’m right, that this is coming, because this is the most excited I’ve been about D&D for more than a few years (the release of Eberron is the last time I really felt something like this). I guess we’ll find out in less than a day, won’t we?

[Edit: The countdown is now over, but the website is down. Methinks Wizards underestimated their traffic.]

Not strictly game related, but my wife and I just got done moving to a new house. Now, I say “done” in the loosest of terms, and it should be taken to mean, “technically we live here, but we’re still pretty much living out of boxes”. It’s been an interesting experience, this being only our second house. I guess you just never know how much stuff you’ve managed to cram into your house until you have to pack it all onto a truck, drive it somewhere else, and then try to get it all out into some semblance of order. Luckily I have the next two weeks off, so I’ll be able to get the house into livable shape over that time. Some advice for people planning on moving in the near future:

• If you need a check mailed to you at work, particularly if it’s being mailed from someone who doesn’t know you personally (like an investment firm or your retirement fund), make sure you spell out for them who the check should be made out to. I got a check mailed to my workplace, and it was made out to . . . my workplace.
• If someone else is driving the U-Haul, and they’re planning on leaving the state and coming back tomorrow, make sure they either leave the keys or turn off the headlights. Not doing both equals dead battery.
• Don’t rent a truck from U-Haul. Just don’t.
• If you have to cancel your cable, make sure you know what you’re getting into. You may, for example, have to wait on hold for more than forty minutes, like I did, for what amounted to a five-minute phone call, even including the fact that someone else’s name had been put on my account by accident.

Anyway. Moving is . . . something.

I’ve been working on something new lately. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’ll tell you a few things, if you’re interested. First, it’s based on Saga, in a loose sense. Some of the mechanical ideas are similar, and many of the goals are the same, but I’m going about it in a different way. For one thing, I’m using playing cards instead of dice. I’m trying to simplify and streamline wherever I can, too. Also, I’m designing it with a setting in mind (Wild Blue), so it’s not really a generic system like Saga is intended to be.

One thing that this has shown me is that the simple decision to use cards instead of dice opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. Concepts like face cards and suits create lots of gameplay mechanics that dice simply don’t allow for.

At any rate, I’m having fun creating the system, and hopefully it’ll give me the kick in the ass I need to finish Wild Blue, finally. Time will tell.